Connecting Nietzsche and specifically Hitler is probably too ambitious if you are starting in you interest for philosophy. As others have mentioned, getting to an informed opinion of what either actually thought is a time consuming task before even starting to connect them directly, indirectly or culturally.

However, given the political climate, I think the general idea of discussing the roots of fascism is a good one.

You can lower the ambition of your question by asking a question such as how Nietzsche was interpreted by the Nazi's; i.e. focus on some key ideas that the Nazis saw as either coming from or being supported by Nietzsche, in a broader theme that philosophy is a dangerous thing and can give rise to philosophies that want to "make reality" instead of understanding it much less justify their interactions with it.

If the germ of this project is to connect the present Trump Administration to the Bush Administration to various intermediate stages back to Nazi Germany and then broader European fascism and the philosophical roots of that, you need but one tug on a single thread:

"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' [...] 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do'"

-- Suskind; In a 2004 article appearing in the New York Times Magazine.

A lot of "argumentative effort" (we can debate whether it's philosophy or not) goes into justifying the status quo, and this effort gets publicity: either because it's pushed by propagandists or then people searching out what they want to hear (that everything is fine).

As important, ideas that challenge the status quo (in an incompatible way), almost by definition, meet with resistance: censorship, counter-propaganda etc.

In the propaganda context, it's easy to use philosophy either as sophistry or then an appeal to authority (this philosopher developed "just war theory", and you better believe our leaders are taking all that really seriously, so nothing more to say about that). Of course, in another context where the justification for the war is clearly absurd, then the opposite strategy of simply dismissing any analysis as superfluous and even childish (certainly to act on one's analysis), so phrases will be used such as it's "human nature" or "we felt threatened, so very understandable" or just "we needed the oil and we should be grown up about it and not whine" and of course the timeless "support the troops" etc.

So, in other words, philosophy (or the appearance as such) will serve the status quo when it serves the status quo, and it if doesn't it will be dismissed.

A great example of this playing out in practice is Noam Chomsky, who has probably the highest name recognition of any intellectual today, but never appears on mainstream TV. Whereas a scientist playing the roll of a "real intellectual", like Neil deGrasse Tyson, appears on TV all the time. The difference, Chomsky challenges the status quo and asks uncomfortable questions, makes detailed investigations and provides hefty backup for his conclusions. If you observe Tyson, you will see sometimes he does mention something a bit "political serious", but it will be always be in the form "some people would say" and no substance of the arguments behind why those people are saying it, nor ever taking risk in what he's saying (other than he believes in science), which of course implicitly legitimatizes whatever talking-heads status quo view of the matter is, as it's all just opinion, none better than another. Chomsky on the same subject would call out the talking heads for being dishonest and duplicitous, just pushing propaganda and making the audiences dumber; more grievous, Chomsky can provide lists of details proving his point as well as the abundant evidence the talking heads ignore all the inconvenient facts, even ignoring whole regions of world history or current affairs if it's easier than making even a cursory white-wash (case in point, Yemen), and can also list ample times the talking heads contradict themselves whenever it suits their pay-masters and clearly have no legitimate intellectual framework they are overtly working within (covertly they may have a very sophisticated framework where it's justified in detail why manipulating the public is good, and also money).

In even more other words, imagine if there was some prime time tv show called "philosophical inquiry" and Chomsky, as a prominent intellectual -- as well as Marxists like Richard Wolf, journalists like Chris Hedges, and the most concerned climate scientists -- was on it often, along with talking heads and whomever, would such a show support the impression that philosophy supports the status quo? Even if one watched this imagined show, and concluded Chomsky and other "leftists" were wrong, I don't think one would conclude philosophy as-such is conducive to maintaining people docile and unquestioning.

In any case, not just opinion. — Benkei

By opinion I meant simply to differentiate with a ruling by the court. But I seem to be behind the times, I wasn't aware a court has made a ruling recently, previously I had only read about the ombudsman recommendation, or is this a separate thing?

Also, it says in this document "preliminary ruling", is there further steps to get to a final ruling, or this legaleze to say final ruling in this context for some reason?

Thanks for posting the link, it's an interesting read. They did indeed consider the crazy abuse unilateral revocation of article 50 would create:

38. The Council and the Commission, while agreeing that a Member State is entitled to revoke the notification of its intention to withdraw before the Treaties have ceased to apply to that Member State, dispute the unilateral nature of that right.

39. According to those institutions, the recognition of a right of unilateral revocation would allow a Member State that has notified its intention to withdraw to circumvent the rules set out in Article 50(2) and (3) TEU, which are intended to ensure an orderly withdrawal from the European Union, and would open the way for abuse by the Member State concerned to the detriment of the European Union and its institutions.

40. The Council and the Commission argue that the Member State concerned could thus use its right of revocation shortly before the end of the period laid down in Article 50(3) TEU and notify a new intention to withdraw immediately after that period expired, thereby triggering a new two-year negotiation period. By doing so, the Member State would enjoy, de facto, a right to negotiate its withdrawal without any time limit, rendering the period laid down in Article 50(3) TEU ineffective.

41. In addition, according to those institutions, a Member State could at any time use its right of revocation as leverage in negotiations. If the terms of the withdrawal agreement did not suit that Member State, it could threaten to revoke its notification and thus put pressure on the EU institutions in order to alter the terms of the agreement to its own advantage.

42. In order to guard against such risks, the Council and the Commission propose that Article 50 TEU should be interpreted as allowing revocation, but only with the unanimous consent of the European Council.

This argument makes complete sense to me.

I can honestly not follow how the conclusion to grant unilateral revocation rights is reached. Basically they refer to the principle that a country cannot be forced to leave the union against their will ... but the purpose of triggering article 50 is exactly a willful exit. It seems (to me) pretty weak quibbling to say a "that Member State changes its mind and decides not to withdraw from the European Union" is now "forcing the member state to leave against their will".

So will be interesting if this isn't the final decision if it gets reversed, likewise if the ruling become final, or is already final, it's interesting how the EU would deal with future article 50 negotiation (or that they have to amend the treaty to make the "exit as a member state" immediate at the start of article 50 but a 2 year status quo agreement, or something along those lines).

I guess they could try to force us into cancelling Brexit or leaving without a deal — S

Yes, this is the EU's current position.

It could change of course, but Benkei and I both agree that it's very unlikely the EU would grant an extension simply to see if the UK could get a better deal.

Benkei finds it unlikely the EU would grant an extension even for a time to have a proper second referendum, whereas I think they would do that; but the decision would be up to EU governments. Without EU governments being unanimous in changing the treaty, EU technocrats in Brussels would be forced to eject UK from the EU, as that's the law as it stands.

Even UK's right to revoke article 50 (i.e. without all the EU governments agreeing) is not officially a law, just recommendation as I mentioned. It could be basically the EU trolling the UK (messing with May's ability to say "Brexit is locked in, it's deal or no-deal"), and they'd actually not give unilateral revocation rights (as it's a crazy precedent; an analogy would be the right to give your work 2 weeks notice, then just send an email the night of your last day and then just show up and keep working there if your other plans fell through; "no backsies" is a pretty well established legal precedent, so this whole "right to revoke article 50" doesn't have any legal foundation as far as I can see).

Or it could all backfire spectacularly and we end up leaving without a deal, with both sides ending up worse off than otherwise. — S

As it stands, the EU views a no-deal Brexit far more painful for the UK than the EU, whereas showing the EU red-lines (the so called "pillars") can be bent would undermine all further EU negotiations with both member states and trading partners as well as create a "UK trading backdoor".any country could exploit. This is why most experts say there simply is no better deal to be had, and May's deal is way better than they expected (expectation was UK would be punished in someway, whereas May's deal is pretty fair and allows UK to simply delay the real problems leaving entails until the end of the century; problem is there's no real basis to say the deal is better than staying in the EU, and 80 years of transition would basically be a diplomatic farce).

I'm not sure if the confusion has been cleared up already, but there are two extensions.

Extending the negotiation deadline is a EU decision, i.e. the EU could unilaterally decide to not impose border controls and tariffs and extend the article 50 deadline to some later date. For instance, if the UK is in parliament deadlock, vote of no-confidence the week before the deadline, and simply does nothing, the EU could decide to grant an extension (there is no set process that the UK must request a extension by some formal mechanism, the EU could decide it by themselves to; to avoid chaos for EU citizens and business for instance).

However, absent parliament deadlock and a collapsed government, presumably it would be a mutual thing to agree on an extension. I mention the EU could grant an extension unilaterally just to underline that article 50 is an EU law and changing it would require an EU decision process: The consensus of all the EU countries. So in theory a single EU country could block an extending of the article 50 deadline (apparently France and Spain would be the most motivated).

These are small details but could become suddenly relevant.

Extending the article 50 deadline is not the same as extending the transition period that is part of May's agreement. Once May's agreement is in place, the whole article 50 deadline goes away and a new bilateral treaty between the UK and EU is in place ... which basically keeps the UK functionally in the EU for a period that could be extended unilaterally by the UK for up to 80 years (expressed by using 20XX as date placeholder, which to me is a weird way of saying it).

I'm not banking on the support of the EU for a delay at this point. — Benkei

I don't really get your focus on unilateral options available to the UK. What's relevant is that article 50 can be extended if need be, whether you find that point interesting or otherwise. And it's relevant because it could pave the way for alternative paths. — S

I agree here with Benkei that the EU would not help in the case of UK wanting to extend article 50 simply to negotiate more.

However, if the UK asked for a 1-2 month extension in order to do a referendum, in diplomatic parlance the EU would "look like a douche" for not granting that, so I think it would be likely. At the end of the day the EU still doesn't want the UK to remain and a referendum to remain would be the best way to put the issue behind to rest.

Given the cost of Brexit to the UK and that many issues still have no way to resolve (good Friday agreement) and that Brexit will supercharge Scottish independence and maybe Whales, and all the prominent Leavers jumped ship, I think the EU would be confident that the UK wouldn't start the whole thing over again any time soon.

The only unilateral action available to the UK would be a revocation. — Benkei

The more I think about this, the more tricky it becomes. At the moment it isn't official, just the recommendation of some top EU lawyer. But if it was official, any country could trigger article 50, try to get a better deal and if not revoke article 50; doing it whenever they want as much as they want. This may lead to the EU being forced to simply not negotiate whenever article 50 is triggered but offer only "crash-out or revoke"; not sure if this would be a good development or not, nor if the EU court would consider this scenario in a final decision to allow unilateral revoking (of course, revocation could always be bilateral).

Edit: Unilateral revoking of article 50 would even allow a group of countries to do it together, protesting this or that, and create one-sided brinkmanship since they can just cancel a minute before the deadline. Since all countries have to be treated equally within the EU, there's nothing the EU could do to disincentivise this sort of behaviour. As a contract lawyer, , I imagine you'd never accept a party able to cancel a deal, try to negotiate a better deal and shop around, and then be able to simply cancel the cancelling and go back the first deal if they don't find better.

Given the deadline of March 29, I don't see how else it could work to have elections, a new government with new priorities, which will then negotiate with the EU over a new deal. Given the holidays they would have 3 months. That doesn't seem possible without delaying the deadline and the UK can only do that unilaterally by revoking its article 50 notice. — Benkei

The process to extend the deadline isn't revoking article 50, nor even require any action on the part of the UK. The deadline is an imposition by the EU, and the EU states can vote to grant an extension; legally speaking they could do it unilaterally but I assume UK would need to ask.

There was an article the other day discussing exactly this, and that France and Spain may be motivated to block granting an extension.

However, I feel no one has any real principles to refer to in casting a veto against an extension for a second referendum to happen (although there's lot's of principled reasons to not grant the extension simply for the UK negotiate more), and it's very difficult to block a whole continent wide "almost consensus" for narrow self-interest (or just to spite the English). There's too much at stake and there would be too much pressure from Germany and the Nordic EU members and EU bureaucrats against a potential French veto for more time for a referendum.

I'm not saying it's guaranteed ... it would be a crazy irony that the French give UK time to have a second referendum, while dealing with the yellow-vests who have mostly consolidated around a demand to have more referendums in France. So it wouldn't be comfortable for France ... but the UK revoking article 50 is I think also sufficiently humiliating for the English political class and still weakens the UK's position within the EU for some time and simply revoking article 50 is a lot easier to deal with (French businesses don't want Brexit either).

All the options are bad now that the UK has verified that the EU won't give them a better deal (including not being willing to bend core EU principles to solve internal UK problems that any form or Brexit creates), but a second referendum seems to me the only way to really "settle" the issue and move on.

A no-deal Brexit would be an order of magnitude greater political suicide for the conservatives, potentially lead to large social unrest and serves no purpose.

If May's deal has no Parliament or public support (since it's clearly just a worse way to stay in the EU), then there's really no reason to pass it and even if they (whoever thinks it's a good idea, presumably May) managed to force it through it may result simply in wanting to get back in the EU later.

Parliament voting to revoke article 50 simply proves the Brexiters fear-mongering that the Parliament would never respect a leave vote and would just dilly-daddle and then cancel it. A second referendum is much easier to defend and provides some closure. The argument "it's not fair to vote again" simply doesn't holdup to scrutiny, and Brexiters holding on to this would eventually just be sulking in a corner.

Edit: Brexiters would probably still say it was dlli-daddling anyway, but there is actually a deal on the table and plausible basis to believe it's close to the best the EU would offer. More importantly, the prominent leavers are no where to be seen, so the "bad-faith" argument is much easier to throw at the leave campaign of not having a clue how to actually leave. For instance, UKIP hasn't been stumping everyday demanding that they should lead the negotiations since they would easily get so, so many concessions so easily from the EU and that a "better deal" would be this, this and that (the embarrassment of demonstrating their ignorance about what to do is worse than staying silent and implicitly accepting their bad-faith, but having the consolation prize of re-emerging after article 50 is reversed to accuse everyone else of bad-faith too). In other words, if Leave is A. better for the UK and B. the government was negotiating in bad faith, then certainly we'd hear about it from the Leavers: since we don't hear from them on how they would be easily doing it better, it's pretty easy to argue that they weren't of good faith to begin with (that their campaign was to build momentum for isolated aspects of their platform, such as anti-immigration, that they would have continued to beat on about when remain won the referendum, which everyone assumed, and their campaign was not some actual plan to leave the EU and resolve all the issues that creates).

It would to some extent be an act of self-harm by the establishment within the political system to that very system of which both they and we are a part. That political system is, by the way, a form of democracy. So, although it might not mean or want to be, it is in a sense anti-democratic. — S

I don't see what the contention is here. A referendum would happen if the Parliament voted for it to happen, so would satisfy the current system of democracy and simply be an extension of it.

Just because a second referendum would be more directly democratic than alternatives, that doesn't mean that it wouldn't undermine the democracy of the United Kingdom; and if it risks doing that, then it's not so different to threats of an explicitly anti-democratic nature. — S

I don't see how this works. Why would parliament calling a second referendum undermine UK democracy?

I've argued against some of those reasons. As I've said, the only circumstances in which I would accept a second referendum as a viable option is as a last resort if we were headed straight for a no deal Brexit. — S

This seems to directly contradict your next statements:

The referendum results being treated as binding would mean that the government does everything in their power to follow through on them, i.e leave. It wouldn't just mean triggering article 50, because they have the power to revoke it. The promise wouldn't be fulfilled if the government did anything that risked undermining or effectively invalidating the results, like holding a second referendum. — S

If the referendum was a binding mandate to leave, "does everything in their power to follow through on them, i.e. leave", then there's basis to have a referendum nor a vote in parliament that could revoke article 50. Parliament could vote down the deal, but then there must be a no-deal Brexit.

It's not a principles position to say on the one had "the referendum was binding to leave" but on the other hand "I would accept a second referendum [...] if we were headed straight for a no deal Brexit". It may feel principles, but thee principles are no consistent. The refernedum wasn't a vote for "negotiate a good exit from the EU and if that doesn't work cancel it", so if you want to stick to the results of the referendum as binding to leave, then what follows from this principle is leaving the EU deal or no-deal.

If you accept revoking article 50, either by parliament directly or by parliament calling a second referendum that revokes it, is better than a no-deal Brexit, that is to accept either mandate of the referendum was not to leave deal or no-deal or then the situation has changed enough to warrant reviewing (by parliament or a referendum) the decision to leave.

Your position seems to be that sticking to a principle until it's too inconvenient and then abandoning it, is a more principled position than accepting the position can be abandoned on a more nuanced discussion of the many principles in play.

That interpretation is susceptible to the criticism that there was what was essentially a verbal contract - which was made public knowledge - which stipulated that the government would treat the results of the referendum as binding, even though the referendum was technically only advisory, and even though the ECJ has since ruled that the UK can revoke article 50. It certainly wasn't sold to us as advisory or as a preliminary indication. It could be further argued that if the government were to violate that verbal contract.. — S

The problem, as I've mentioned, is that "parliament" nor "the government" is a single moral agent to begin with, so any MP can argue "they didn't make that promise". On-top of that "what exactly was the promise" is up for debate.

then they should be held to account in some way. There should be repercussions. — S

The available repercussions to levy are voting those responsible out of office.

Moreover, you mention a final say, yet there is already due to be a final say. — S

This is the core problem in your position. If you accept the parliament can have a final say then that final say could be to hold a second referendum to have a "final-final" say (in other words it's not a final say). If you accept the parliament can decide vote one way or another, then they are legitimate in deferring whatever decision they might make to a second referendum.

You seem to be interpreting things already assuming that there won't be a second referendum and the parliament has the right to not-call a second referendum, and somehow that parliament could do this is justification in itself. I agree nothing is forcing UK parliament to call a second referendum, but that they have the power to decide not to call a second referendum implies that they have the power to call a second referendum. The main purpose of my arguments is to show a second referendum isn't somehow anti-democratic, and that parliament could base a decision to hold a second referendum on a wide range of reasonable and sound arguments (that doesn't make those argument true).

That's a misreading. That's not at all what I meant. I meant that, despite the complexities involved in discussions about Brexit, some of it can be boiled down to some key ethical issues of a more general nature, that we're all familiar with, such as whether a promise should be kept, and under what circumstances would it be justified to break one. — S

Yes, this is also what I'm arguing against. The principle "promises should be kept" is actually quite difficult to apply, even to just add weight among many other considerations.

The "we'll consider it binding" is only really meaningful to consider as referring to the individuals politicians that participated in this claim and not "all parliament", even at the time. There was no law passed explaining what "binding" meant and actually making it "binding" on the government (until repealed of course).

Parliament is not a singular cohesive moral agent, so just to establish who exactly made this promise to begin with is a complicated task. Obviously any new MP could say "hey, I didn't make this promise". Since there was an election in the meantime, any politician that was MP at the time could say their mandate has changed (any representative can always justify a change in position based on claiming their constituents have changed position; whether disingenuous or not, it's a sound argument); so even politicians that unequivocally participated in the promise could say "it was a promise of the previous parliamentary session", now there's a new sessions and it's our job to look at all the options. But I would wager most MP's could easily say they "didn't really back the promise", that they viewed it as a promise of the PM and cabinet at the time.

Then, what was "binding" referring too?, if it wasn't a mandate for a no-deal Brexit and the chaos that would follow, then the only alternative is that it's a mandate to "get a better deal with the EU by a negotiated exit" ... but then who's to say what's a better deal or not?

After doing this, there remains the possibility that the promise has been kept, that everyone understood it to be triggering article 50 which the government did, which at the time everyone understood would "lock in Brexit"; in other words, the "binding actions" have been carried out, that the resulting situation is not what people expected doesn't somehow extend the scope of the "binding promise" one way or another.

So even just establishing what the promise actually meant and who should still feel bound to it and to what extent it has been fulfilled is a complicated philosophical task requiring reviewing each MP's statements and even state of mind of what they believed "binding meant" when they made or were associated with the promise.

That's the problem with vague promises and why verbal contracts rarely get uphold in law. The purpose of a written contract isn't so much as to prove the agreement was struck (a easily forged signature isn't much proof, which is why there are notaries for when the proof is the essential part), but much more to actually spell out what people are agreeing to and why what seems like a simple agreement can be easily dozens or hundreds of pages.

Then, once all this is established there's all the further issues of under what conditions is it right to break the promise and do those conditions exist.

I think UK politicians will feel compelled to recognise the results of the first referendum and don't think that realistically their thinking will have evolved or will evolve in the time left that it would lead to a sensible referendum. So it seems politically impossible. Ignoring that I'd think it would be good to have a referendum although I'm still not sure if it is already ready for one considering the lack of detailed analyses of various options. — Benkei

Yes I agree a referendum doesn't seem likely. The plan seems to be to go right to the edge of the "crash out" and so force accepting May's deal; or at least this seems May's plan. I don't know enough about UK politicians to guess what other factions maybe planning. However, if this plan doesn't work, I wager a referendum is more likely than no-deal Brexit and the EU would supply more time if that's needed. Parliament just cancelling Brexit is also in the running but seems less likely to me. A no-deal Brexit seems insane, but so was a vague Brexit vote with vague promises of the vague results being totally binding.

The EU was simply an awesome idea as an union for commerce. It's hideous as a vehicle for political union especially if the objective is some kind of US of Europe. I think the worst threat to the EU are the idiots in charge that are trying to make it into a tight political federation. — ssu

The tighter federation is a failure of the corporatist forces, not the peace building I am referring to. The goal of the EU constitution was basically so corporations can overrule local governments, which is anti-democratic and anti-peace. But, the EU constitution didn't pass precisely because the EU is not a federation where a central bureaucracy can impose their will on local structures.

However, in terms of promoting dialogue and cooperation between nations, and more importantly creating an economic and diplomatic block to implement shared values on the global stage, the EU is a big success.

The EU has far more impact on global affairs than the sum of all the individuals countries would have separately, and I would argue this influence is far more positive than what would otherwise occur. EU development aid policies, inter-governmental cooperation, a block of "power" that does have leverage visi-a-vis other great powers, as well as trade relations, has a massive affect on global politics. The EU's policies promote democracy and human rights in all sorts of ways, and the EU is also a template and example for peaceful close intergovernmental relations.

Of course plenty of criticism of the EU is valid on many levels, and it's possible (though I think now very unlikely) the EU doubles down on corporatist police-state trajectory, but if the EU were to breakup I find it exceedingly likely China and the fully developed distopian police state Chinese model will start to fill in all the cracks at the global level. China has zero interest in promoting democracy and human rights, does not serve as a democratic model, and (absent the EU as an alternative economic partner) China will be able to provide vassal states both economic development, protection and their social control technology (which will become more and more refined).

These geo-political considerations need to then be put in the context of ecological disruptions and resource crisis. The EU is in my view our likeliest chance to solve our ecological problems, it is a large enough trading block to implement large policy initiatives.

Of course, if climate change is a hoax, if China's a success case of how capitalism can thrive without democracy, if massive famines and resource wars aren't "our problem", then of course the EU is a silly thing. Not to say that you personally have such opinions, but I wish here to highlight that the EU is more than just commerce for people who see it as a force for peace, human rights and reasoned global policy initiatives (compared to it not existing at all), and despite a lot problems to fix and a hard road to help build and promote democracies elsewhere and also start solving the ecological crisis, still a good bet and worth contributing too.

Edit: So for us EU proponents in the above sense, Brexit is not simply "will Britain GDP do better within or outside the EU", but very potentially a start of a process that breaks up the EU; the UK is a big piece and leaving has lot's of political consequences, many unforeseeable.

The Dutch stand to lose 4.7% of GDP because of Brexit. We still closed ranks as part of the EU because the value of the EU is not only economic. There isn't a nice deal available as it would undermine the EU if not being part of it doesn't make you significantly worse off than being in it. — Benkei

I think a lot of UK commentators, and certainly more voters, don't quite get these two critical parts.

A "good deal for the UK" is an existential threat to the EU, the only options are crashing out (so painful no other country would try it) or then functionally staying in the EU but now with no say (no other country would see the point). The UK is big but not big enough to have leverage over the EU to make existential concessions.

And even with these two option of crash-out or basically stay in the EU, Brexit could still cause a cascade of events that lead to the break up of the EU.

The EU is both a successful peace mission and a failed neoliberal-corporatist experiment (with undertones of NATO encroachment to Russia's border and playing second fiddle to disastrous US militarism in the middle east) with these bills now coming due. It's tempting to walk away from the failure parts, I do sympathize with the Brexiters, but on a global scale the EU can anchor a peaceful re-ordering during the US-China inversion. Without the EU, most countries will have no choice but to switch from US to Chinese patronage, and if we now view the US's promotion of democracy during tenure as world super power as wanting we will give it a stellar rating compared to what we will see with unchecked Chinese geopolitical influence (especially once they start to really need those east-Asian and African and South-American resources to maintain internal stability).

The referendum is already contaminated by the results of the first thereby unnecessarily restricting the offered options. Remain still doesn't in any way address the issues people want to vote on, whereas both leave options do to a certain extent. See my previous example with five possible options to give you an idea. So it will still be issue voting and the only reason remain could win is because the leave vote would be fractured as the issues people would vote for are captured by both leave options. — Benkei

I mentioned three clear options to contrast with the first clear vs unclear referendum. I didn't mean to exclude the potential for even more options. Ranked choice seems to already deal with vote splitting. Do you think this wouldn't work for some reason, or are you against ranked choice in principle?

However, I completely agree with your points on why a no-deal Brexit (and Brexit to begin with) is a terrible choice.

From what I understand of the EU-May deal, it's basically "stay in the EU with a few ornamental changes, and have 80 years to activate the real Brexit". And I assume the politicians are in agreement that they won't let a no-deal Brexit happen, either calling an referendum or proceeding, as you suggest, of a parliament vote against the deal and then vote to remain in the EU (though I just don't see how that's politically palatable, so I assume they'll go with referendum or then accept May's deal).

edit: even now I can't bring myself to believe UK politicians are foolish enough to go no-deal ... but they've been proving me wrong so far ...

I'd argue to revoke the article 50 notice. Just don't have brexit. A referendum the sort that they would probably have to resort to on short notice is going to be plagued with the same problems and be marred by issue voting. — Benkei

Why would a second referendum be plagued by the same issues? From what I understand the main problem with the first Brexit vote is that the option to leave had no clear interpretation; no reasonable person would argue that 51% of people voted for a no-deal Brexit for instance, and without that interpretation it's unclear what the mandate is exactly.

However, a second referendum can be between three clear options: EU's offer, no-deal, or remain.

Parliament simply revoking article 50 seems to me, pretty clearly, would be plagued by far more issues; and is exactly what the Brexiters were crying wolf about (that parliament would one way or another ignore the referendum results).

Edit: Also, in terms of time, the EU would certainly grant an extension so a proper referendum can be made if needed; in terms of money the cost of a referendum is far outweighed by the economic implications; and in terms of democracy it's the most valid democratic process on critical issues (why a referendum was called to join the EU in the first place, so completely consistent that a referendum would be called to validate a new relationship with the EU).

The greater the number of recipients, the greater the duty of keeping the promise. The promise was made to the whole of the UK, which has a population of 66.57 million. There was a confirmed electorate of 46,500,001. And 33,568,184 ballot papers were included in the count. Which gives an exceptionally high turn out of 72.2%. — S

Sure, all else being equal, promising to more people adds weight to the promise. However, I was aware that the referendum involved a lot of people and I don't see how this changes any of the reasoning's for a second referendum I posit as defendable. Again maybe not "true" arguments, just of a sound and reasonable structure following likely agreeable ethical principles to most UK residents.

These examples aren't relevant, given that I'm not arguing that there are no circumstances in which a promise should be broken, only that the circumstances in the case of the referendum up to the present moment aren't enough of a basis to warrant breaking the promise that, to the extent that it's within their control, the results of the referendum would be treated as binding, and there wouldn't be another one, at least for a long time. — S

Ok, we are in agreement here, but (at least in the post I was responding to) your argument was it's simple ethics that promises should be kept; if you make a bold statement like this you should expect to be challenged.

The relevance of the circumstances I bring up is that parliament could make a reasonable defense of a second referendum along any of the lines I mention. My main point is there's no clear constitutional or political or ethical or "fairness" principle that somehow excludes a second referendum. If you agree that in principle a second referendum would be justifiable with "sufficient changes" or "sufficient evidence of campaign fraud" or "sufficient changes to the makeup of parliament that they need not feel bound by poor decisions of passed leadership", then we are in agreement in principle.

As for the "promise of binding", I do not feel this is a simple defense. For instance, what do we mean by "binding"? That article 50 would be triggered? Well, that's already done so "promise fulfilled", what do we do now that a deal is on the table: consult the people once again.

There isn't a concrete Brexit agreement to vote on. There will only be one when it actually comes down to the vote in parliament. — S

From what I understand the May-EU proposed agreement is the "final offer" as far as the EU is concerned, so it seems to be there's something to vote on.

But I'm against breaking the promise and rendering the results meaningless. I can't stand the consequence that it would've all been for nothing, that what was in fact my first ever vote in politics turned out to be meaningless and a waste of time. I don't want a second chance, I want the first chance to matter. — S

A second referendum would not render the first meaningless. In any complex planning process it's very normal critical things come up for votes several times; so it's fairly natural that there's a vote to start a process and then the same kind of vote at critical junctures in the process. For instance, if you instruct your lawyer to liquidate all your assets and throw the money out of a helicopter, it's likely they will come back at each critical step to know you still want to carry it through (though I don't mean this analogy as a alarmist parallel for Brexit, it's not like starting a disastrous war or something on that scale; for me the stakes are more geopolitical: I believe, despite the EU having man flaws, it is a much greater force for democracy and peace building than China or the US going forward; so UK staying in EU makes the EU stronger and in a better position to counter-balance China and US; and remember Trump maybe just the beginning of the current US foreign policy trajectory -- we should not assume that Trump is about to go nor that what will follow him will be magically better).

The consequences of the referendum have been triggering article 50, going all the way to 30 months before Brexit deal or no-deal. I believe in the context of the Brexit campaigns, the "binding promise" was more about the idea parliament would just ignore the vote and do nothing; in that scenario, yes I agree it would lower faith in the democratic process; however, the actions of parliament post-Brexit vote have definitely had consequence, and so given all those consequences and actions by the parliament it's quite natural to confirm things in a second vote.

Okay, maybe it's not simple ethics. Maybe that was a poor choice of terms. Although I think that you've taken my meaning way beyond what I intended. — S

"Promises should be kept" is a good slogan, but the problem with good slogans is that even knowing that the issue is more complicated, the feeling of "having a good slogan" quickly translates to a feeling of "the position is strong as it has such a good slogan that can make gains in twitter memes and sound bits allowed to air by the media". In other words, people can quickly become victims of their own propaganda, especially with a compliant media wanting to shelter people from any nuance (as that quickly creates space to criticize elites); though I'm not saying this is your case, it could be worth reflecting how "average George" can quickly believe good slogans means a good positions must exist that these slogans represent.

What you say about parliament is only hypothetical. As things stand, the reality is that there is to be no vote in parliament on a second referendum. There is only to be a meaningful vote on the final deal. And even if there were to be a vote in parliament on a second referendum, it would still need to get a majority in the house. Both major parties, officially, are against it. Would there be enough rebels? Doubtful. — S

Yes, my points are mainly on the theme that it's not anti-democratic for Parliament to call a second referendum. Given Parliament "represents the people" it isn't anti-democratic "in itself" for parliament to decide not to have a second referendum (any criticism of this is reducible to the whole Parliamentary scheme, not inconsistency in the system as it is; i.e. no second referendum would be consistent but within a low-efficiency-democratic system as a whole; in other words the same elites-representating vs as-direct-as-practical democratic, such as the Swiss system, debate as existed before Brexit or second-Brexit).

Now, if I was an MP I would vote for a second referendum. The main argument I would use is that if I struck a preliminary agreement with another business and then the lawyers drafted the final version of the agreement, I of course have the right to backout and even if the lawyers (i.e. my representatives) had power of attorney to sign on my behalf -- and even if their understanding of my instructions left room for interpreting that maybe I don't want to review the final draft -- I would definitely want to review the final draft as well as consult me again at critical points. No competent representative in the business world would act otherwise without either incredibly clear instructions to not-re-consult or then some sort of bizarre situation where confirmation is impossible and so they did their best; in the case of Brexit, re-confirmation is not impossible, and any lawyer would, given a similar situation in business or with individuals, that obviously confirming at each step is the best way to know one is faithfully representing their clients; I don't see why political representatives should have lower standards (which is logic that leads directly to the Swiss system, which I am a big fan of). So yes, I'd expect my representatives to respect my preliminary indication of what to do, but I'd also expect them to come back once they have a clear idea of the agreement or execution plan so that I could give a final decision (preliminary agreements are not binding as that makes negotiations basically impossible, it's binding after the signature and parties can walk away before that; in the case of Brexit it's a highly suspect line of reasoning that "the results of the referendum being biding" continues to make every further step towards Brexit also binding, it's entirely consistent that the results are binding to start implementing the objective and further consultation is reasonable to make subsequent critical steps also binding).

He knows that it's impractical. The point is that lacking a suitable timeframe between a referendum and a rerun causes problems, and the suggestion is that two years isn't long enough. — S

Yes, I wasn't clear enough that I was trying to make this point that a referendum every 15 minutes being impractical doesn't mean 2 years is impractical. That some interval being certainly impractical does somehow extend to all intervals being impractical. I'm not sure who originally made the argument that accepting a second referendum would be a slippery slope to voting of Brexit every second of the day, but posters have already mentioned that by this logic only one vote could ever be held about anything.

Baden's argument is that there's enough of a basis to render the referendum results invalid. I disagree, and my view reflects the reality, as the results haven't been declared invalid by anyone with the authority to do so. — S

They are not currently declared invalid by a sufficient authority, I'm quite sure no one is arguing that. In this context "the results are invalid" I would wager this phrase is making reference to what such an authority should decide. This is a notoriously tricking issue as rule breaking is almost inevitable (especially if you can send a mole to break a rule and annul the referendum if you like), but at the same time if the campaign rules have no substance if they can be broken without ever being able to invalidate the results (as the short time-span running up the vote is too short for any enforcement measure to likely succeed beforehand).

I don't know enough about the specific to make an opinion on this point, my main interest is arguing against the idea that a second referendum would be somehow anti-democratic or unethical/unreasonable for the parliament to decide to do. To be clear, I also don't see it as anti-democratic (in itself) to not have a second referendum, the wise representatives can always claim "they know more, even secret intel and negotiations, that can't be made public and they are sure means Brexit can't be undone without damaging the UK" (but this displaces the debate to whether the parliamentary system is sufficiently democratic, but is another debate).

It boils down to ethics on a fairly basic level. Should promises be kept? — S

This is not simple ethics. Though most would agree that promises have some moral weight to them, one should not make a fraudulent promise or dismiss a promise for a slight convenience or on a whim, it's a pretty old and trivial philosophical exercise to show that placing "holding promise" as an overriding ethical principle is extremely difficult to defend.

For instance, if I, in a moment of anger, "promise to kill someone" (thinking it was a justifiable killing at the time of the promise), should I keep my promise if I later decide the murder is not justified?

A more trivial example is that in moment of exuberant celebration I promise to give you as many shots as you want, but then I renege on this promise when I see you may overdose and die; I, nor essentially any member of society, would view it as the ethical thing to keep giving you shots, and if you did die and I knowingly let you the defense "a promise is a promise" I doubt would sway any judge or jury in a manslaughter or some similar trial.

These are an extreme and a trivial example but sets up the basic dilemma, which I'd be happy to oblige you with plenty of other examples if you want. The general case however is that changing circumstances making a promise no longer feasible to keep or even circumstances staying the same but simply a recognizing a promise as too foolish to keep or that the promise was unethical at the time, we can easily invent circumstances that I'm confident everyone on the forum would agree reneging on the promise is the ethical course of action. Now it might be reasonable that some consequence goes with the promise breaking, but that's a secondary issue (in the case of Brexit maybe the secondary consequences should be resignations a general election and voting out anyone still associated with it).

In the case of "the promise to stick with Brexit", parliament could make any number of arguments to justify breaking the promise. First, "who made the promise" is not quite the same people as are in charge now, so the "new parliament" can decide is now new enough as not to be bound by the old parliaments promises (just like a new boss can easily cancel whatever promises an old boss made if there's no legal commitment and no one would think much of "promises must be kept"; the old boss was incompetent and got fires, so foolish promises that were made no longer stand unless legally backed). Pretty much every modern nation is based on the argument that it's entirely reasonable justifiable to break an oath to some king at some point in time.

The parliament could also argue that bad faith actions of the leave campaign do substantially outweigh any supposed equivalents with the remain campaign, and so the "good faith" implicit precondition of the promise was breached and the promise no longer holds. It can be further argued that the this good faith assumption did not need to be made explicit because there are laws that govern campaign finance etc.

The parliament could argue that they made the promise under the assumption that article 50 could not be canceled, now that it seems that it can it is their responsibility to reconsider their promise based on this new information.

Or, parliament could make no direct excuse at all for the promise breaking, but argue they have a more important promise to protect the interests of UK citizens and they simply made a mistake in organizing the Brexit vote the way they did and that they must act on their ultimate promise as servants of the public in providing a vote now that there is a concrete Brexit agreement to actually vote on.

Now, I'm not saying all the above arguments are "true". One could argue that in each case there isn't sufficient reason to act (not sufficient campaign violations, not sufficient changes in parliament that they can feel liberated from previous promises, etc.).

My point is that it is not "simple ethics" to conclude no second referendum should be made, it's a very complicated issue and parliament would be entirely within their mandate and power to call a second referendum as well as within their mandate and power to decide on behalf the people to push through Brexit.

In the US there have been referenda to do one thing and referenda to undo that very thing. Gay marriage was one of those referenda: first rejected, then passed. Might there be a third to reject it again? That's possible; it might not be a good thing, but I don't see any reason why it can't happen, all quite legally. — Bitter Crank

Yes, we are in agreement here. I listed arguments for "no second referendum" simply to make the difference between the "anti democracy argument" and the "practical argument". By practical arguments I mean not having a Brexit referendum every day or every hour, as well as legitimate arguments elected representatives could make. The argument that the elected representatives advertised it as a "final thing" because once the process is started there's no going back, is in my view a legitimate argument. But by legitimate argument I just mean it can be argued without self-contradictions right off the bat; it is a viable position of the parliament so say "we said it was final, exactly because the process is painful and once started the only viable thing, for all sorts of reasons, is to carry it through".

However, by viable I don't mean to say it's the best decision nor that contradictions won't arise with further arguing; just that arguing no referendum for practical reasons doesn't fail right out of the gate (in contrast to arguing for no-second referendum based on it being more democratic to not vote again, which does, in my opinion, fail straight away).

In short, the current UK parliament is not anti-democratic in "sticking to the deal of a final vote" nor anti-democratic in calling a second referendum. One can question the democratic efficiency or even legitimacy of the UK parliament system to begin with (which I definitely would), but insofar as one accepts parliament as legitimate then they can legitimately "stick to their guns" as it were; as legitimate elected preventatives they could decide any number of things, such as campaign fraud, are reason for a second vote or then decide nothing is sufficient and as the elected wise rulers they need to stick to Brexit since it was known from the outset going back on it isn't tenable regardless the pain; if their decision are bad (which I would say they are) there is a process to replace them with people who will call a second referendum. Even after Brexit is official the UK could rejoin.

However, to argue the lack of a second referendum is anti-democratic is reducible to the UK parliamentary system being anti or insufficiently democratic. My point is that, the UK system being what it is, neither a vote nor not-vote is a constitutional crisis ... which the UK doesn't even have to begin with ...

But I agree with you that a second vote is probably a good idea, and the temporary embarrassment does not outweigh all the negatives of Brexit -- that sometimes it's better to fold even after a sizable commitment.

You're strawmanning me. — frank

I'm not. My statement was for any deliberating body; I am a deliberating body when making my own decisions; therefore my principle should hold for myself; any mutually exclusive principle should not hold for myself. If the deliberating body represented in the referendum changing its mind would be an instance of tyranny against itself, then so too would an individual changing their own mind be an instance of tyranny.

Of course, it makes no sense to tyrannize myself so it could seem the whole argument makes no sense, but a democratic body tyrannizing itself also makes no sense in essentially the same way. A legitimately democratic referendum by definition cannot be an example of tyranny.

Again, there maybe other reasons not to have a second referendum, but avoiding tyranny or anti-democratic processes in one form or another isn't one of them.

Must they hold hourly referenda so that all decisions reflect the pulse of the public in order to meet your definition of democracy? — Hanover

I'm not sure if you read my post, but the argument against this is it isn't practical.

Of course, democratic processes such as deferring to representatives and referendum should be democratically created; I don't think anyone's arguing against that.

If polling shows my congressman no longer popular, is it an insult to democracy that he continue to serve? — Hanover

For instance, most states I believe have a potential recall process for congressmen. How easy a recall should be is a practical consideration that should be democratically determined; weighing the advantage of "getting a better representative" against the cost and disruption a proliferation of recall votes would create.

You act like fairness and adherence to prior decisions are unrelated, and you put no value on finality, as if indecisiveness is a virtue. — Hanover

You maybe confusing two separate issues. One issue is whether it is anti-democratic or a constitutional crisis to hold a second referendum. The other issue is whether it's a good idea to have a second referendum or not. That the vote was advertised or understood as "final" in someway, that going back on Brexit would be a international embarrassment accomplishing nothing but significantly weaken the UK within the EU (due to the embarrassment, being out the loop last two years on various committees, and more isolated than before due to changing alignments in the meantime), are arguments for not having a second referendum (which are basically May's arguments for staying with Brexit, though states more indirectly). However, those reasons are practical considerations, not inherently more democratic than a second referendum.

(From my Canadian perspective) my own reading of the whole situation is that the model was Quebec, which had a separatists movement that was partly fueled by "not being allowed to have a referendum, this is not real democracy". This argument is powerful as it's simply true and builds it's own momentum and displaces the argument from the substance of separation to a sense of injustice of being robbed a referendum. Both in the Canadian separatist experience (and many other contexts of different referendum movements for various things), losing a referendum simply dissolves this kind of momentum and what seemed like a political force yesterday simply evaporates the next.

So I believe that Cameron and his inner circle viewed the UKIP movement as similarly partly fueled by "the absence of a referendum as proof of a great injustice", and so a preemptive strike was a better bet than trying to ignore it and letting it make slow but sure gains. The other issues of Quebec nationalism, cultural erosion and regulations being "decided in Ottawa where not-Quebeckers dominate", and anti-immigration (both Anglophones from other provinces and immigrants to Canada) were also similar themes.

However, I think a better lesson from the Quebec separatist movement is the clarity act that came after the close referendum, that was passed some years after the close referendum, where a clear process was outlined on how a province could separate. Step one is to have a referendum that would simply start negotiation between the province and the federal government one what the proposed separation would actually be, then there would need to be an proposed separation agreement made and then a vote. Critically, the vote would need to represent the majority of eligible voters, not simply the majority of who votes; so a higher bar but not anti-democratic nor robbing a province of a right to make majority decisions.

Basically, the clarity act was made to solve the fact that a sudden ill-defined separation vote would be total chaos with dozens of practical problems no one had the slightest answer to: obviously same trade issues of exiting a common market, native Americans having treaties with the federal government, large amounts of people from other provinces living and working in Quebec and vice-versa, as well as things like the country being cut in half.

I'm not accustomed to taking anything for granted in that department, maybe just a cultural difference between us. So my question didn't seem at all ridiculous to me. Your statement would be considered alarming in my part of the world. — frank

I've followed haphazardly the thread, but I think Benkei's main point is that any deliberating body can change it's mind. If I change my mind I am not somehow tyrannically opposing my own will; likewise, if a king, parliament or referendum changes decisions there's no fundamental political dilemma in doing so: new information or arguments come to light and a previous decision is changed.

The problem in changing decisions are secondary to the process itself. For instance, if an individual or a government signs and then reneges on an agreement then this may create problems with whoever the agreement was with -- given the issue it may even be argued to be immoral to renege that particular agreement, but it does not create a constitutional crisis in the fact itself of deciding and undeciding (on any political level: from the individual to referendum of whole countries).

The argument for not polling the people on every decision, both new ones and to confirm existing ones, every single day is that it is simply not practical to do so.

There maybe many practical argument for not having a second referendum on the Brexit issue, but the argument that it renders democracy incoherent in some way doesn't work for the same reason an individual changing a decision does not in itself render the person incoherent (the content of the reasons for the original decision and content and consequences of changing the decision would be where any incoherence would be found).

What are your thoughts on the current situation on the US border with immigrants? — ron

US illegal immigration is a complicated issue. The root causes are first and foremost immigrants needed to drive economic growth by importing births to grow the population (easiest way to grow GDP) and on a micro level various industries wanting cheap vulnerable disenfranchised exploitable labour (including sexually) who then use profits to, in part, corrupt the political system to maintain the status quo. This economic incentive for illegal immigration often combines with people compassionate for illegal immigrants and wanting to protect them from deportation. These are the internal reasons.

The external reasons are mainly the war on drugs and CIA actions that, as I mention in my first post, "was for the good of the system in order to avoid communists taking over" that disrupt fragile democracy, result in crony capitalism riddled with drug gains and so failed, tyrannical or inefficient states people have many reasons to leave and take their chances in the US (to build a new life or remit money back home).

So, for solutions. Why is GDP growth an absolute imperative? Why is US birth rate below replacement? Why do companies easily get away with exploiting illegal immigrants? Why is the war on drugs still a thing even after the obvious reality has emerged that it causes way more problems and doesn't even solve any problems, both in the US and the drug supplying countries? Why is US policy to support crony capitalism in its poor periphery?

The above root causes need to be addressed so solve the causes of illegal immigration. However, now that there's 11-12 million illegal immigrants in the US, it's simply impractical from both the economic and compassionate point of view to deport any significant percentage of them; making a immunity period where legal immigrants can be made legal in one form or another and then afterwards large fines for companies employing illegal immigrants and even larger fines and prison time for any company obstructing their illegal workers from getting documented, can then turn the illegal problem in to a legal problem, which would still be nuanced and complicated situation but the first step.

I think a large part of it simply has to do with financial contributions to politicians. Reversing Citizens United vs. FEC would be incredible as it would help reverse "dark money" from foreign entities trying to influence elections+politicians like you are describing. — ron

Yes, corruption is now legal in the US. These laws are essentially represent the "rats looting and abandoning the ship" phase of collapsing empire.

When I talk about the US system, I refer to the US global system (empire, hegemony, power projection, Internationale order, or whatever it's called in a given context). I see essentially no way this system will continue for the reasons in the first post. Bush II oversaw the overstretching and loss of credibility supported by economic crisis at home phase; Obama oversaw a very tense but diligent strategic retreat and salvaging America's international brand phase; but Trump is simply trashing the whole system and there is no recovery or even consolidation and maintenance of a smaller empire as
far as I can tell: the system is in free fall.

However, the prospects of the US as a country is not so bleak. Though the root problems are numerous and have been neglected for decades, it also means there's plenty of low-hanging fruit so a group of competent politicians could make life significantly better for US denizens in short time. Most people in the US don't actually benefit from the US global system. If the momentum reversed it could go a long way very quickly. However, it's a race against time since if the US global system collapses with incompetent, delusional and/or corrupt politicians in charge the result will most likely be total chaos domestically (hyperinflation, disrupted supply chains, roaming bandits, doubling down on the police state, riots like we are now seeing in France but with lot's and lot's of guns; it could go as far as things like a coup); just like a cycle of fixing problems could suddenly make life a lot better, a cycle of violence could spiral out of control (Appendix: Mexico).

Yours is a disturbing post. I hope most folks will try to read it. What is disturbing about it? It is a long piece of misdirection and apologetics for Russian activity, built on an extended tu quoque argument. — tim wood

I'm not defending the Russians here. Putin is definitely trying to do everything he can to disrupt the Western system, just as the US did everything they could to disrupt the Soviet system (and the similarities of tactics are in my view striking).

If I had to choose between a US, Soviet or Chinese dominated system, I would not hesitate choosing to live under US hegemony; and I basically do, living on the periphery of the US system where I am not bothered much by US policies but have no real risk of falling under Russian or Chinese domination either.

However, just because the peripheral places orbiting the US system is the best place to live at the moment, does not mean the US system can or even should be saved.

The point of the OP is that the Russians wage war, make war. Part of that war is disinformation. The question is, what to do about it? — tim wood

The conclusion of my post was that Russia is simply stoking (how effectively can be debated both ways) processes that are happening in the US anyways. These processes are things like a delusional war lobby that led the US into the Iraq war that was later found for discredited WMD reasons, general quagmire in the middle east, polarized political system far beyond ability for reasonable compromises to make sound policy when needed to fix real domestic and foreign relation problems that are very real problems, legalized cronyism now at eleven under Trump, de-industrialization to focus on "innovation" but then letting the Chinese steal all the IP anyway because promoting real information security would frustrate information collection, various addiction problems from opiates to television, inflating a real-estate bubble and then bailing out the bankers with zero percent credit who then foreclosed on overdue interest payment of citizens, out of control debt at every level, dilapidated infrastructure, natural disasters costing hundreds of billions made much worse by climate change and bad zoning and land management over decades, are all problems that have nothing to do with the Russians.

Now that these, among many, problems are starting to reach a breaking point where the citizenry find them intolerable but the political system can't respond in a reasonable way (producing Trump as an answer, for reasons including but not limited to a prior inability to modernize presidential elections, a break down of reasoned discourse due to Fox news and conservative talk radio, systematically disenfranchising black voters, a reality-TV culture with many just wanting to see the next season of "The Trumps vs the Establishment", a distrust of established media fueled by things like supporting the WMD narrative which creates a credibility vacuum filled by the echo chamber of your choice with a little help from your friend Facebook, and maybe even some Russian and Saudi money cutting deals here and there to tip the balance for certain supporters to jump in with Trump, and maybe even some twitter posts too), the system is starting to destabilize and both Russian legitimate arguments (i.e. Russia looking after Russian interests just like US looks after US interests, prove yourselves morally superior) as well as genuine disinformation starts to add to the problems.

So what to do? In my opinion there is nothing to be done other than solve the underlying problems causing the US domestic economy and political system to destabilize. That what Russia does and says starts to matter (have some sort of real effect) these days is evidence that the system maybe past saving.

For certain, Putin learned a lot about weaknesses of Empire from the collapse of the Soviet Union and is trying to help along similar tendencies towards collapse in the West. My previous post was just trying to point out troll farms and facebook adds are not Putin's tools of choice here (though of course if facebook did allow Russians and other foreigners to buy hundreds of millions of dollars of adds, enough to matter, as foreigners or then laundering to pack money in the US, I'm sure Putin would have jumped on this opportunity too; just the blame here is Facebook and US government for letting it happen as it's pretty easy to stop; you simply can't move that kind of money to a US corporation without that corporation or any cursory regulatory fiscal investigation finding out, which "ensure campaign finance laws are being respected" is plenty enough reason to investigate in any reasonable legal system ... though I wouldn't be surprised if it was either impractical or legally impossible to force facebook to allow scrutiny of political add purchases during the election, and maybe still is as it seems measures taken since were voluntary).

I'd like to say a few words on the subject of the OP (though on the subject of "what about America meddling in foreign elections" I have to backup Πετροκότσυφας arguments here; it's as well documented historical fact as any other; it's in fact so well documented that the former CIA director, Woolsey, didn't even bother denying it just saying “Oh, probably, but it was for the good of the system in order to avoid communists taking over” (and keep in mind the subject is meddling in elections). So, as Πετροκότσυφας points out, you need a double standard to defend the US and condemn the Russians on this point, that the US is good and either knows what's best for other electorates (which again no one really even bothers to defend anymore, though I welcome anyone to try) or then the morally neutral "defending US interests" which translates directly to "Russians can defend their interests too". However, it's not clear to me anyone in the thread is actually defending US's meddling or simply denying specific comparisons as reaching the threshold for meddling.

As for the OP's contention:

What the Russians have done and are doing to us is no joke, and to be sure, they're doing it harder in other parts of the world. Perhaps it started, in the modern era, with Stalin. At issue is the lie, backed where possible by force. I don't see much news from Eastern Europe or the Baltic States, but I'd guess there is relentless pressure from the Russians on those countries to corrupt the narrative in any way possible, so that truth and news become essentially impossible. — tim wood

I'd like to point out what's usually minimized or not mentioned at all, which is is the whole disinfo meddling story essentially boils down to the Russians influencing voters primarily through twitter bots and facebook, and a particular focus on facebook adds.

Even assuming the (scant examples so far of) trolling and adds coming from Russia was a Russian government operation, Twitter and Facebook are US corporations in US jurisdiction responsible for obeying American laws with sophisticated data analysis and profiling, In terms of organic spreading of information ... you need to be in people's social networks for this to have much effect; just making an anonymous bot on twitter will end up being followed by a few other bots. Accounts with influence on Twitter are real people or organizations with millions of followers genuinely giving weight to the opinions of the objects of their fandom. There's no evidence of the Russians bribing or blackmailing twitter or facebook influencers to support Trump nor some mysterious widespread hacking of hundreds of accounts that all shouted for Trump on election day; that's what a real disinfo campaign would be like on this social media level (to have any real effect); the idea that just making accounts and tweeting some poorly crafted memes, which is what I got from Mueller's actual case against the Russians, has any affect is preposterous. The whole thing, on face value, basically makes Mueller look like an idiot ... but there's a good reason for indicting what seems like a two-bit Russian troll farm which is to maintain the facade of the primary purpose of the investigation in order to continue also investigating other crimes that are very serious just not Russian election meddling per se (money laundering going way back and corruption and campaign finance violations of various kinds, involving American porn starts, as well as various other corruption schemes ).

More important, it's not clear if making accounts and tweeting opinions as some anonymous world citizen and trying to attract followers and act like a random twitter user is legally actionable in any sense. Millions of people around the world as well as plenty other bot networks based elsewhere (it's a hot topic which plenty of bot nets are sophisticated enough to jump on the ban-wagon on all by themselves) tweeted and retweeted opinions about Trump or Hillary; why can't Russians participate? If they can't, why just them but every other country can? If no one can, how is Twitter supposed to enforce this (if laws have actually been broken then Twitter is responsible to attempt to make some reasonable effort to make sure laws are respected on their platform, or is this not the case: non-US citizens outside US jurisdiction can break US laws on a US platform that need not do anything about it, only the non-US citizen is at fault?)?

Where someone could have some real effect would be in facebook adds. But here who's to blame? Russian oligarchs and shady characters with perhaps even the blessing of Putin to go buy some facebook adds? Or the US regulation for allowing Facebook to allow clients to buy targeted adds without even bothering to check who's buying them to ensure campaign finance laws are being enforced?

US lawmakers left an obvious door for any foreign entity to buy influence anonymously wide open with the precision of Facebooks user profiling, and somehow the narrative is Russian's orchestrated a sophisticated disinfo campaign. Even if Putin himself poured billions of his own money into facebook adds, who's fault is that really? Now, if it wasn't really much adds for anyone to notice compared to the hundreds of millions spent of legitimate campaign and pack money, then well who cares? If it was enough to make a difference, no one at facebook noticed hundreds of millions of shady political add buying from ambiguous organizations requesting to target American citizen profiles?

And let's say facebook does turn a blind eye because "hey it's money, I like money, letting this slide could definitely have zero future PR consequences we should think about", none of various US intelligence services with their sophisticated analysts, human intelligence, money flow and internet monitoring algorithms, direct access to facebook servers, no one there saw or suspected hundreds of millions of foreign funds are buying political adds and we should maybe go and knock on Facebook's door and see what's going on?

The whole social media disinfo story, thus far, is so easily stopped by a few monitoring algorithms and some extra steps to verify you are can buy political adds in conformity with campaign finance laws (problem solved). I see no way to argue that the fault is either on American regulators and facebook for enabling foreign political add buying, of then their not at fault because some got through but such a small amount compared to billions of domestic money spent on adds that it's totally irrelevant and of no real concern (though still good to plug any wholes for the future).

Now, why is Russian disinfo such an important topic for US elites. Part of it is blaming Russians for Hillary's loss, but Hillary and other US commentators were already saying there was an information war with Russia before the election (and that the US was losing). There just wasn't any mention of twitter trolls and facebook adds (which obviously the next sentence would be, we should probably get Twitter to shut down Russian disinfo bot nets and we should probable get Facebook to stop selling add-space to Russian political disinfo operations).

And this is true. There is a sophisticated Russian "disinfo campaign", it's called RT. It operates exactly like the BBC or any american news network, except it will host American journalist and intellectual voices that are essentially blacklisted from appearing on any Western platform as well as journalists and intellectuals that jumped ship in order to not self-censor.

These American and Western dissidents basically say whatever they want about American politics without any instruction from the Kremlin. The only disinfo part of RT is that they are not allowed to criticize Putin or Russia in any significant way.

RT also allows anyone to actually know the Russian side of the story on any political event, whether truth or lies you can hear what the Russian government has to say for themselves.

The reason RT is not a big part of the disinfo conversation (though mentioned from time to time as "the problem") is that countries can have their own media organizations, and RT is not some covert operation masquerading as US based (it's literally called Russia Today). US media has a US bias, British media has a British bias, French a French bias etc. yet RT having a Russia bias is suddenly a problematic disinformation campaign. There's no real international law argument or even philosophical argument to make with RT (they haven't kidnapped any US journalist and forced them to repeat prepared statements at gun point; everyone who works for them is doing so voluntarily).

Russia can also host whistle blower dissidents physically. Snowden's plan was just take the material and go to Russia. Without having a place outside US influence to go to, Snowden may have not leaked to begin with, been captured before being about to transfer the information, and even if successful at least made an example of. That there is a physical refuge for dissidents is just as frustrating for US elites as is a media platform refuge (just as the west being a refuge for soviet dissidents was a frustration for the Soviets).

The reason it's a problem, is simply the West was accustomed to controlling the narrative and it's way easier if there's simply no way people can easily hear the other side of the story; so it makes life difficult. And here, (because RT does have a meaningful affect) US elites immediately identified google's amplification of RT's reach through the youtube algorithm (treating RT the same as any other content that a given profile may or may not be interested in), as something that "should be done about it". Here google resisted a time but ultimately caved, changing their algorithm as well as joining in platforming Alexjones and a bunch of other US citizens.

The other part of Russia's disinfo campaign is just normal international politics, taking advantage of a loss of credibility of the US after the disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria as well as things like Yemen. When a US narrative breaks down around something, because it makes no internal sense (like funding jihadists to fight Assad), this gives space for Russian diplomats to advance other ideas.

The biggest problem of all of course is Russia propping up Assad to fight the jihadists. If it was quick and easy toppling like Libya shortly after it would "oh golly gee, Islamists and jihadists have basically taken over, they weren't democratic activists after all" and everyone would forget about it. But having it drag on, even western journalists going to Syria and seeing that their all Jihadists. This brokedown the US narrative to the point where US DoD supported factions are fighting CIA supported Factions (meaning the US military system themselves couldn't agree on which narrative their following).

But regardless of narrative, Russian intervention in Syria created the worse information of all which is the CIA can't just topple any government at will nor rally the West for any cause at Will. There's enough a priori doubt about US claims and enough Russia view-points being heard (on internet or by ambassadors) that the rally the clans "this guy is evil, we got to take him out, no time to think of what's likely to happen after" effect, as we saw in Libya, stopped working in Syria. For instance, the chemical weapons; there was enough doubt about what really happened for real diplomats and analysts (not just US mainstream media) and more importantly enough doubt about US ability to control the narrative regardless of facts on the ground (people remember the last time WMD claims started a war ... and more importantly could not be maintained indefinitely without any facts; hence, what the facts are actually matter and reasonable doubts need to be considered regardless of appearances).

The second biggest problem is Turkey, it's rumored that Russian infosec tipped Erdugan off about the coup, which is nearly impossible to believe occurred without US blessing and likely aid. This again undermines the "topple governments at will" assumption as well as US infosec omnipotence.

Erdogan surviving the coup creates all sorts of problems.

I could go on, but my point is what Russian is doing is similar to what the US did to the Soviet Union. Host dissident intellectuals that have opinions and analysis that spread one way or another (i.e. breakdown narratives despite large internal propaganda trying to maintain those narratives), and frustrate military adventures in the middle-east, use loss of narrative credibility to sow doubt and undermine alliances via normal diplomatic channels (so when there are problems there is no coordinated response from allies, institutions and even soldiers, as people ponder both factual and moral doubts instead of acting to protect the system). However, just like the Soviet Union, these are internal processes and weaknesses that are happening anyway (it wasn't Russia that invented the idea Iraq was a mistake, nor leaked the Torture tapes nor gave Trump 2 billion dollars of free air time) and can only be helped along on the outside (there are US intellectual dissidents without RT, but with RT hosted dissidents can outproduce essentially the rest of the internet in terms of dissident content weighted for quality, and likewise allies can start to doubt US narratives without Russian diplomats providing further contradictory arguments and information).

All this to say, if you want to get worked up by the US media going on about the Russian information war, at least get worked up about the right information war, not twitter and facebook posts and adds.

Not exactly, no - but increased oil costs effect everything else produced or supplied using oil. The ubiquity of oil raises prices on almost everything - a cost of living increase that eventually, wages increase to account for. Now, the original price hike has effectively disappeared. You don't get as many apples for a dollar - but you get more dollars an hour, and work the same hours for the same apples. Effectively therefore, the value of money has changed to accommodate the price hike. — karl stone

This is not what happened in the oil shock. Your describing a fairly distributed inflation, where things cost more but you make more so it's the same thing. Oil shocks don't create a fairly distributed inflation.

In the immediate and short term, sure - a huge economic dislocation you seem to want to cause on purpose, to make renewable energy more competitive. I just don't think that a good idea. — karl stone

Internalizing the true cost of fossil fuels would make renewable energy more competitive in the market and it would create social upheaval for a time: entrenched industries that built up based on the assumption they could continue to externalize the real costs of fossil fuels would have their feelings hurt, and people who identify with the fossil guzzling lifestyle would cry like babies for a time. However, it's a mistake to believe this would be "bad"; continuing to burn fossil fuels at cost of extraction rather than the real cost also has a bad impact. The discomfort of adapting to a new economy where true fossil costs are internalized to the price is far less than the discomfort of disrupting the ecosystems down the line. For every investor or used car salesmen that takes a "hit" from the internalization of the real cost of fossil fuels, you have to pair up with people in the future who take a "hit" from a cat 5 hurricane in a higher ocean, or take a "hit" from changing weather patterns that cause drought and famine, or take a "hit" of their environment getting so hot it's basically unlivable there.

Also, internalizing the true cost is not making renewable energies artificially more competitive. Someone is paying the difference between the true cost of fossil burning and the price-cost either now or in the future, just not the person who got the direct benefit from the fossil burning. The negative externalities drag society and economy down; lowering production and efficiency elsewhere (disease, damage to natural resources, smog chasing away tourists etc.). Again, what can be debated is what exactly the true cost is: how much lung disease is due to fossil burning, how much environment damage etc. But it's basically economics 101 that allowing industries to externalize costs is simply a subsidy to that industry from the rest of society and so distorts the economy to be less efficient.

There's lot's of social problems I believe subsidy is the way to solve, such as education and health care. But for fossil burning, this is one thing where the "market mechanism" of just internalizing the true cost solves the issue. "Free-market" economists paid to defend entrenched interests get all knotted up when this is mentioned; this is why the fossil industry had to run a deny everything strategy.

No. I said renewable energy doesn't need subsidies - it needs infrastructure funding, like the rail network, the canals, or the Romans and their roads. I also propose a means we can raise the money to apply renewable energy on a massive scale, and keep fossil fuels in the ground at the same time. — karl stone

Government funding to an industry that is not on the same terms as available private funding, is a subsidy to that industry. Paying for rail lines to be built is a subsidy to the rail industry, paying for roads to be built is a subsidy for the auto-motive industry, paying for broadband lines to be built is a subsidy for the telecommunications industry, paying for canals to be built is a subsidy to the boating industry. You can say these are worthwhile subsidies to create public utilities that are good for these industries and by extension the rest of society, but they remain subsidies.

A good first recourse is the wikipedia page on subsidies which also mentions "environmental externalities" as a form of subsidy. Internalizing the true cost of fossil fuels is the anti-subsidy program that would allow the market to work efficiently.

I agree with the way you reason out the scenario you describe, but it's not what I'm proposing at all. If you'd read the OP - I'd love to get your opinion. — karl stone

Your title is "how to save the world". I already addressed the reasons the hydrogen economy is unlikely to be economic to build. Your response for the leaking of hydrogen and the atmospheric effects of this on a billions-of-tons scale was "it's just a material science issue", but if we can just hand-wave material science at the problem then batteries and solar thermal work for base-load power as well.

Since this is a philosophy forum I think it's much more relevant the subject of whether the general approach is workable or the best. The problem of the general approach of the government paying for huge energy infrastructure is that it still is a subsidy (weather you want to call it subsidy or not) to energy industry as a whole and so pushes out energy-saving technology and business models that would otherwise be competitive if the true cost of energy was reflected in the price (be it renewables or fossil). If hydrogen is the best energy storage media for base-load and ships, then the market would figure that out, if it's batteries then it's batteries, if it's more just using less energy to get the same results (negotiating by voip or vacationing by train instead of flying for instance) then it's that.

I don't see how it's off-topic to discuss whether your approach is optimal, even if technically feasible. If you're concern is only technical feasibility regardless of it being economic or good policy, then I'm sure a physics forum will accommodate that discussion.

I disagree. I wouldn't suggest internalizing the true cost. But if you did, the very value of money itself would adjust - just as it adapted to oil price shocks in the past. Rather I'd suggest, seeking to limit the implications to a narrowly focused, feasible and necessary endeavor - like funding renewable energy infrastructure. — karl stone

There's no magic symmetry that somehow changes the value of money to offset internalizing the true cost of fossil fuel burning. The oil shocks of the past weren't somehow made redundant by money changing value, but rather created massive economic dislocations: incumbent industries shrinking because they don't make economic sense without cheap fossil fuel energy and new investment in renewable energy as they are more competitive if fossil energy is more expensive (i.e. the social upheaval that I alluded to in my post).

By "funding renewable infrastructure" I assume you mean by subsidy. If we view just the comparative cost of energies, it seems that forcing fossil to internalize true costs is the same as subsidizing renewables. However, it's not the same. By simply subsidizing renewables to be cost-comparable to fossil energy is not the same as internalizing the real cost of fossil energy.

First, the real true cost of fossil (pollution, health, deforestation, military bases and patrols of fossil producing regions etc.) is not reflected in a renewable subsidy.

Second, subsidizing cost-parity by definition leaves the market open to fossil as regional and other kinds of arbitrage will make fossil more economic in some places even if renewable is better in other regions.

Third, and most importantly, a subsidy to renewable remains a subsidy to primary energy as a whole, and this has the effect of subsidizing energy intensive industries over energy-efficient industries. For instance, with cheap enough kerosene it's economic to fly fruit around the globe, displacing local fruit production. When gas is cheap enough people can afford to commute longer distances, when gas is more expensive it motivates people to live closer to where they work or buy electric vehicle or use public transportation etc. Likewise any business is motivated to make investments that conserve energy (location, insulation, natural lighting or other passive architecture, reducing supply-chain distances, light-weighting or otherwise redesigning production to consume less energy) -- it is not true that these investments would happen anyway as the return on investment is sensitive to the cost of energy: the money saved overtime must be better than the opportunity cost of other things the business can do, like marketing, or then then the general discount rate (for those unfamiliar with this sort of terminology, if a 100 000 USD investment saves 2500 USD a year in an energy saving, but that same 100 000 USD could generate 3000 USD per year in bonds or the stock market or perhaps even 4000 USD a year through a marketing campaign, the business will do one of these other things if they are "economic rational agents", but if the cost of energy was double and they would save 5000 USD a year then the economic rational thing is the energy economizing investment; and of course the differences don't have to be this large, the energy saving could be 3 999 USD a year and a fixed income investment, i.e. bond, could be 4000 USD and the economic rational thing to do would be the bond).

Edit: forgot to explain the discount rate which just represents the same basic facts but instead of the business having 100 000 USD in profits it is able to borrow 100 000 USD; so, if the cost of borrowing is 3% per year, then the energy saving investment must make more than 3000 USD per year to pay off the interest and the principal over the loan maturity or just "eventually" if the business can roll over their loans.

Just a few things I'd like to drop into this conversation.

Hydrogen is simply not a good energy carrier for a few reasons. First, it's not a liquid or solid at ambient temperature, which is a big inconvenience. Second, hydrogen is so small it diffuses through most metals causing micro-fractures leading to failure; solving these problems to power a rocket or in industrial processes can be solved ... but scaling to a transport infrastructure this problem is essentially unsolvable. Third liquid hydrogen boils off and easily slips through the tiniest cracks between parts making it extremely difficult to make a hermetic sealed hydrogen system at a lab level and simply impossible at an infrastructure scale. Hydrogen floats to the top of the atmosphere where it acts as a potent green house gas.

Long story short, if you have a lot of hydrogen you may as well solve all the above problems by reacting with carbon to make hydrocarbons and have all the benefits the energy density of hydrogen without the massive technological hurdles. Since there's excess carbon in the atmosphere it's easy to get to do this and means not only a cheaper infrastructure to build ... but an infrastructure that already exists.

So the thesis of the OP is essentially correct, there's just no reason to use hydrogen by itself as an energy carrier. And since you'd need to make electricity first to make hydrogen to make hydrocarbons (or whatever analogous process), you may as well use that electricity directly for most transport needs. Electric trains, trams and batteries for personal transport is simply far more efficient if you already have electricity. "Synth-hydro-carb" fuel would still be useful for trucks and lorries and airplanes .

Of course, as the OP mentions and thread has discussed, the real problem is the getting all the energy to make hydrogen or whatever your energy carrier is. With the energy problem solved you can then solve water, heating in winter, running an industrial base, space travel, or any other problem on the table.

When you look closer at this problem, it's easy to solve technologically. As Bittercrank points out in the previous post, these problems were solvable decades ago through technological and lifestyle changes. The core of the problem is this pesky western lifestyle.

The amounts of energy consumed by the typical western lifestyle (and that must continuously grow in energy and resource consumption!) is just so enormous that it's simply impractical to live the western lifestyle if convenient energy and minerals are not simply lying in the ground to be dug or pumped out. But if you get rid of waste you get rid or (most) mining, (most) personal large vehicle transport, (most) road construction and maintenance, (most) meat consumption, (most) of suburbia, (most) of the airplane transport and (most) industrial mono-culture farming as (most) people just have a garden and community farm they participate in on the same land area they are currently wasting on lawns and roads (solving many problems). Sure, some of all these things can make sense when needed, but if you look at the numbers there's simply no economic reason to make solar power to make jet fuel to fly people to New Zealand to visit the sets of the Lord of the Rings; so, if you mandated a renewable jet-fuel (through a fossil tax internalizing the true cost of fossil jet fuel into it's price) ... only actually useful flying would tend get done, which if you think about is a very small amount. Likewise, you could mandate less meat consumption overnight (i.e. again, internalizing the real cost into the price people pay for meat) and so people could still eat meat ... they'd just eat a lot less. And so on for every climate or otherwise environmental problem. Nearly every problem can be solved essentially overnight by internalizing it's real cost, people would consume it less or organize their lives to do things for themselves as it just saves too much money not to do it (like a personal garden). Of course, what the true cost is can be debated, but assuming we get it right, then by definition the problem is solved through internalizing the true cost.

What happens the next day? All these industries contract, the capitalist system is thrown into chaos, people's identifies as car riding, suburban house owning, rapacious meat eaters with a job in one of these industries that fly across the globe for a few selfies ... gone. This is the core of the ecological problem and why no politician has done anything about it. Huge push back from existing entrenched industries on one side and on the other identity crisis for a large part of their constituents.

Why (should have) a politician do something given the social upheaval it implies? Because the problems don't go away, and a bunch of social upheaval is far better to live through than the collapse of ecosystems and prolonged global conflicts it will induce (is inducing) and both these factors simply getting continuously worse and worse over time (not some switch that we then adapt to).

The light at the end of the mine shaft is that the system isn't sustainable and so will end.

The GOP is looking to overturn Roe vs. Wade... — creativesoul

I'm really not sure they will actually do this. It's very convenient for Republican politicians that the Justices took care of this issue rather than legislation. Their base gets to feel victimized and there's none of the nuances, compromise and progressive implementation, planned or through reforms at various time, that the legislation process creates. It was illegal and a big problem issue for Republicans in less social conservative areas, and then went to just being completely legal and something Republicans politicians don't have to worry about.

So the situation is sort of best of both worlds for conservative politicians (assuming they don't care at all about the underlying issue, just pandering to their base, which is my general assumption). They get the outrage support from the pro-life movement (some who might otherwise be social-democrat, supporting health-care etc.) without losing swing-voters that are pro-choice but otherwise more conservative. My guess is the farthest a conservative SCOTUS will go is just not interfering in state level anti-abortion initiatives, which is essentially status quo at the moment anyway.

seem likely in the house and — boethius

In general, and historically I have been impressed with how the court has decided many - most issues. Even rulings that I disagreed with. It is a human institutions, and there are exceptions to that, but in general they have been a reasoned body. I think the lifetime appointment is a critical part of that. — Rank Amateur

There is only one advantages of life-long appointments in my opinion, especially if the bar is high to get on the bench (not 51 senators as it is now). The main advantage I see is that the judge appointments are spread out over decades so this guarantees a minimum diversity, and political rot must set in over decades to make big changes. However, I don't feel "unaccountably" in the form of life long appointments somehow magically increases honesty, it's a similar argument to the "rich don't need more money so are less corrupted" which people made vis-a-vis Trump. If a judge isn't affected by lollipops of the prospects of their kids and nephews getting the jobs they want of VC financing for their startup or whatever, not to speak of direct bribes or direct threats or blackmail (even he it means resigning or possibly being assassinated), I would strongly guess it doesn't matter the format of the judgeship for this kind of person; a person who is affected by leverage of whatever kind out of weakness or even welcomes bribes and lollipops as "just looking our for number 1", I don't think lifelong appointment would cause some sudden change of heart.

In previous comments I've outlined the advantages I see in direct election of judges (with much higher bar that 51% first-past-the-post systems being available, as well as longer terms than a typical politician, for instance 10-20 years). However, the dutch system of judges selecting their replacements as well as the US system can work. It's a matter of potentially working better as well as being a better learning experience for society (to consider what the law is, what good judgement is, judging a judges record and voting, I feel is a positive experience for society as well as lending more credibility to the system; in particular in a direct-voting system, if corruption is perceived as a problem, the judge that really wants to fight corruption fiercely and face death-threats can present him or herself; also, in the Europe continental judicial tradition, such as in France, judges generally have power to investigate themselves police or political corruption or things they feel of extraordinary import, it doesn't happen often but they have the power, though this power can be done in the US or any system as well, it's another good thing in my view).

Hasn't even left the dry dock yet. We have not had a direct serious charge yet against him - if such a charge comes to life - the Republicans in Wash will rush to the floor to start proceedings and do all they can to end this nightmare. — Rank Amateur

I'm starting to really doubt this scenario. Trump has already essentially admitted to obstruction of justice on national TV, has scandals of affairs and payments to porn stars, separated children from families, which are just three incredible things more than enough to impeach on. A large portion of sitting US politicians hate Trump, for taking away their power as well as genuine disgust with how he acts and what he says. They've tried (with Fox news supporting) numerous times to trigger an conservative rejection of Trump wave, each time failing. High profile republicans have on numerous occasions made the case against Trump during the campaign. There's definitely enough republicans in the house that genuinely think Trump is bad for the country and the long term prospects of the Republican Party to impeach him ... but no demand from the Republican base, so it would be a short-term meltdown of the GOP and total loss of power of any Republican who participated. It would be similar to the assassination of Ceasar to save Rome from tyranny where every participant was hanged anyways regardless of if it was the right thing to do; there's not enough Republicans politicians that would but country before themselves (many genuinely believe that maximizing personal gain is maximizing society's gain and so if they would lose any power by opposing Trump it's by definition good for the country to keep supporting Trump).

I don't see Mueller being able to up the bar in terms of the scandal-meter, and even if he could the Republican base may not have any threshold where they would be calling for Trump's impeachment. Since impeachment is a political process, without public sentiment of the Republican base changing I don't think it will happen. Even if democrats get the numbers to impeach in both houses, which seems essentially impossible in the Senate at the moment in the midterms anyway nor in the event Trump is re-elected, they might still not impeach him without Republican support, as it would fire up the Republican base (if they still support Trump) and they may prefer Trump over Pence to erode the Republican base as a whole (which is definitely happening under Trump) so they may just dillydaddle and investigate and bring as much scandalous information to light as possible without ever actually impeaching Trump even if they could (i.e. same scenario as the Republicans who think Trump is terrible now: it might be the right thing to do but it's politically expedient not to do it).

edit: corrected implied super majority needed in congress to impeach, which is not correct.

it is about the votes about abortion - not the issue, the votes. It is, and has been, about how 3 Republicans can vote against a pro life court member and get re-elected, or run for president, and how 1 democrat can vote no and not get beat in a Republican state by a republican. — Rank Amateur

Yes, if you're talking about the Republican base perception that Kavanaugh will change abortion precedent, not whether that precedent will actually change, then we are talking about the same thing. Of course, other judges would have fit that description too, why Trump chose Kavanaugh in particular is because he sees Kavanaugh best for him and knows, due to the abortion thing and his base supporting him, the senators can't do shit to change it even if they wanted too.

disagree - the beauty of the lifetime appointment to the bench is once on - Trump hold absolutely no power over him, none. It maybe about a constitutional issue of what can or can't be done to a president - but it won't be about Trump. — Rank Amateur

By about "protecting Trump", I mean that's why Trump nominated him, as he saw he's the guy most likely to protect him, whether due to leverage or just ideological compatibility or both.

I do not believe life long appointments really do free people from all leverage points and allows them to vote their conscience. Leverage in elite circles can be from all sorts of angles.

Yes, Kavanaugh will still be there after Trump, but this may play out poorly for Republicans.

Republican (establishment) ideology has become a cult of personal enrichment at the cost of everyone else including the state. Money equaling speech is a good example of how far the Supreme court is into this ideology even without Kavanaugh. The supreme court is vital to the state functioning, once the ideology of (what the rest of thew world calls) corruption is fully in control it could rapidly erode democratic processes to the point sufficiently many people simply no longer find those processes credible. What happens after is difficult to predict, but it's not good for anyone.

I can help him there - none of them are, and that is exactly the loyalty he deserves. — Rank Amateur

Some are loyal, like his family members, but I agree the term loyalty as we usually understand it isn't a good word for most. It's more brand loyalty, people who believe the Trump brand is the future of the Republican party and are staying on the ride, as well as people Trump has leverage on.

as for all the other Trump stuff - let me restate what I said before - he is the worst human being to ever hold the office - and the sooner he an this mess leave Washington the better. — Rank Amateur

I think the impeachment boat has sailed. The entire media, including Fox news, has tried multiple times to try to switch the narrative to "is Trump done, I think Trump is done, yep he's done ... oh look the polls haven't changed". Fox News has painstakingly taken the credibility of establishment media and given it, not to themselves as they imagined, but an organic mania machine on the internet.

Trump has created a new normal for the Republican base and party apparatus. The previous republican main players will find it ironic that all their effort into voter disenfranchisement, electronic voting machines without paper trails and supreme court precedent of recounts not being a thing (further strengthened by a 5 conservative justices) will be reaped by Trump, but they'll get their piece of the cake too and be happy about it.

Not being a Republican or a Democrat, but an independent who thinks the system is broken - here is what I think would be a great ending. The Senate approves Judge Kavanaugh on Saturday - and on Monday he declines the nomination. — Rank Amateur

My opinion is that this scenario has essentially zero chance of happening. If you want to believe that Kavanaugh is some noble patriot thinking of the interest of the court and country before himself and his masters, well let's see Monday if he "declines".

As I mentioned in an earlier comment, the purpose of the FBI investigation was simply to buy time to see how the polling goes for senators like Flake who still don't get the scandal / logic immunity that the Trump administration has vis-a-vis the Republican base.

The administration has been immune from any scandal affecting the Republican base support for Trump (he might be the most popular Republican president, among self identified republican voters, ever), so why would it stop now? And indeed it hasn't.

Therefore, claim the investigation is thorough, which the Republican base can then repeat to each other, and that Kavanaugh's performance in difficult questioning was stellar, and then nominate him to the bench.

Why Democrats Senators would pickup the meme of a "FBI Investigation" in the first place, when the FBI is controlled by Trump and he's certainly changed it to his liking by now ... is a good example of Democrats being paid to ignore how the system works (that's basically the roll of most Democrat politicians).

I also disagree that this this is about abortion. Kavanaugh's nomination is about protecting Trump. I very much doubt abortion laws will change, that's just something Republicans let the evangelicals believe they'll care about someday. The situation of abortion as it is, is convenient for republicans and the'll likely keep it that way.

What matters, is that while Mueller's investigation grind on and scandals peter out and new scandals emerge, and the leaves turn color and the larks go extinct, Trump has been finding by trial-and-error who's loyal and who's not. He got hoodwinked by Sessions and his backers so that an investigation could start that would have leverage on Trump (something the Republicans establishment ousted by Trump wanted to control him and something Democrats wanted to blame the election loss on, so a win-win for the previous power brokers), but Trump has found other backers and has started to understand, with his family members, how the state apparatus works and the amazing powers of the President (from controlling things like the FBI, intelligence agencies, nominating SCOTUS, tariffs and trade deals, threatening nuclear war and the like) as well as cut deals with the real Republican power holders like the Israelis, Saudi's and the Kochs, not the puppets seen on TV who he can now just ignore. He'll soon be able to pardon who he wants from federal and state crimes, get rid of Rosenstein and Mueller, as well as take full charge of the whole wealth of propaganda outlets and dirty bag of tricks the Republican establishment has painstakingly crafted over the years.

In my view Trump has now secured the essential state power mechanisms (why he's now so happy on TV) thanks to unquestioning loyalty of the Republican base that have kept all the Republican senators and congress members in line, and avoided a revolution of the moderate Republicans teaming with the Democrats to impeach him.

So great for Trump. And a great day for Trump supporters for sure.

However, supporting an incompetent statesman who falls in love with dictators is not necessarily a good future for any American, including Republicans. When a real crisis comes, history has shown that governments filled with loyal sycophants simply lose their grip on the situation.

edit: corrections

Both Democrats and Republicans are allowed to be members of the SCOTUS. And as amazing as that is, generally Republican Presidents nominate Republicans, and Democratic Presidents nominate Democrats. It is one of the really cool things about winning an election. — Rank Amateur

When did I say that a republican can't be a judge? I was explaining why it's reasonable for democrats to not vote for Kavanaugh confirmation even if the FBI completely exonerated Kavanaugh proving Ford any all other accusers are frauds, which was a response to your claim of duplicity on the part of Democrats.

Now, should the system be that with 51% of senators representing less than 51% of people can appoint a supreme justice? That's another question.

Likewise, I qualified "presumably" about the the people wanting unbiased and non-partisan judges (and a democrat or a republican judge can still strive for fair and non-partisan rulings, which would then be reflected in their record and a good basis for getting the support of 60 or maybe more senators). There's nothing forcing people to want unbiased judges, Americans are free to want judges based on loyalty to party above country and even common sense if Americans want.

Nevertheless, thanks for advising me to win an election. I'm not an American, nor ever lived in America. I won't reap the direct affects of republican propaganda (largely with democrats enabling the whole thing) gaslighting America's ability to make even simple arguments. But I do care about Americans and everyone outside America affected by the world's super power, so I take interest from time to time. For myself personally, I choose to live in the place on the planet I believe least affected by this interesting time in history.

he was all of those things you wanted him to be until give or take 60 days ago when a women sent a letter to the committee saying he molested her as a teenager. — Rank Amateur

What are you talking about? Kavanaugh's record is extreme partisanship. That's not in dispute. He already got caught stealing democratic info off a gov server with a stolen democrat password. Because republicans control the process they can choose to ignore all the evidence Kavanaugh isn't fit for the office.

He was everything Republicans wanted, an extreme partisan, until a women sent a letter.

The point I am making and you are missing, is the reality of the situation is meaningless. — Rank Amateur

I understand your point and I disagree. Had the republicans nominated some book-worm, squeaky clean goody-two-shoes, it would have been smooth sailing. And let's even imagine a false accusation (whether a "democratic hit job" or one of the millions of Americans just imagining things), and this much more boring judge would have made a much more boring and calm and reasoned response and basically end of story.

The situation is like it is because Kavanaugh is simply not what is expected of an important judge, and the illusion he is, is starting to implode even for Republicans (judge Judy has far more composure and sharp intellect ... far, far more ...). He's clearly a rash partisan from his record, as well as jumping to the conclusion that Ford's testimony must be a Clinton political hit job without evidence (jumping to conclusions that have no supporting evidence is exactly what a judge is hired to avoid doing).

It's not a situation that it's "all politics" and Kavanaugh would have been taken down regardless of his past or how he answers questions. The situation is that precisely because he's so over-the-top partisan, so loyal to the Republican party, rash in presuming everything is a liberal conspiracy, it's exactly for these qualities that Trump selected him. Making the most extreme partisan choice of the most irresponsible person (vis-a-vis caring about the constitution and forming unbiased opinions) has the affect of giving plenty of credible ammunition to Democrats (who understandably don't want an extreme partisan). R senators and the white house knew Kavanaugh's "beach week" past and that it's anyone guess what might come up. It's reported fairly powerful R senators argued strongly against Kavanaugh's nomination.

In my opinion, Trump selected Kavanaugh not only because he's the most partisan, the most extreme in defending the party, most likely to be loyal to Trump ... but also if a scandal does emerge it takes attention off of Trumps various scandals (and normalizes that "everyone has crazy scandals", which exactly what he said about everyone in the room in his most recent word-escapade). So, he gains something either way and another candidate can easily be rushed through last minute if need be (republicans control every branch and they can do what they want ... for now).

Edit: clarity

My point was, IMO, however he responded it would have been incorrect by those doing all they can to prevent his nomination. — Rank Amateur

This is simply not true. If he was calm and collected, people (even those against his nomination) would say he has the demeanor of a supreme court justice when the stakes are high.

It should also be noted that it's pretty easy to deny things that happened 30 years ago, the possibility of making a case (even if he's guilty) are slim.

So him simply calmly denying it, accepting that he did drink but never sexually assaulted anyone, going through the questions of the senators (assuming there really was no corroborating evidence to support assault claims that would arise, FBI or in the press). The conservatives could then say "see, this is supreme court material", and if he had calm and reasonable answers befitting a federal judge presenting themselves for a supreme court nomination there's little democrats could say (and since they can't block his nomination, republicans would be in an easy position to tell their base "sure, she got assaulted by someone, look how great a judge Kavanaugh and his masterful display of self-awareness and critical thinking in his hearing").

Since the whole thing happened quickly, my guess is that the republican senators thought their "female assistant" would undermine Fords credibility catching her in some sort of contradiction (as it happened decades ago it should be easy to create lot's of doubts and find a contradiction or two), that Kavanaugh would be "very judge like" (because he's literally a judge), that they would do the "republican outrage" to stoke their base (because that's what they do), and then quickly vote him through in a couple of days saying it was all liberal hogwash. Once he's on the bench, nothing anyone can do, news cycle resets.

It didn't go down that way so they accepted a limited one week FBI investigation to see how things play out in the media.

What is the appropriate way for an honorable man to respond to outright lies alleging attempted rape, assuming that's the case? — Hanover

If we bring the acceptable behaviour bar down to the level of kindergartten, then yes being accused of stealing Billy's marbles WHEN YOU DIDN'T, for sure normal to get angry, start re-intepreting all your actions as that of a good little boy and also claiming it was a setup by the Clintons from the start.

However, if the SCOTUS bar is at that of reasonable, calm and collected adults, presumably characteristics the country wants Judges to have (but not written in stone anywhere), then the expected reaction of unfounded accusations is not to get angry, deflect, go on strange diatribes about a political hit job (without providing any actual evidence), claim a calendar proves what you actually did, truly bizarre questioning the questioner. The expected response would be simply defending one's character, claiming complete surety that the accusations are false, answering questions honestly (even if true answer lend credibility to the accusations). For instance, if I'm falsely accused of sexual assault in a bar that I frequent, republicans think it's totally normal, expected, excusable that I'd then lie about frequenting that bar. What am I going to do, place my self at the scene of the crime! No, it's not normal nor does it help my cause, since it's easily verified to be false and being found in this lie undermines my claim that I didn't do it (even if I didn't do it!!).

(Most) innocent people usually react to being a suspect in a crime by being overly honest, making exactly what they know very clear, presenting all the nuances of all their relevant actions and behaviour patterns, because they have true memories (of doing things other than the crime) that it's easy to volunteer the information. A person who did the crime (or suspects they easily could have done the crime in a drunken blackout) cannot by definition volunteer lot's of true information that supports their innocence: they must lie when questioned. The problem with lying is that it's difficult, what's a fully buyable lie? What's a lie that not too believable but can't be proven to be false? What are other true details that are incoherent (though still possible) with the main lie and it's better to lie about those too? What are true details that "don't look good" but are best to be true about (world is a strange place where weird things and coincidences do happen)? When is there no good lie and it's better to simply "not remember"? Making good lies is a difficult task (especially with impromptu questioning) and it's also difficult to deliver them well (as the emotion isn't real, and must be faked too).

What we saw in Kavanaugh's testimony is someone who's bad at lying. Bad choice of lies, bad explanations, bad delivery, sometimes deciding that stone-walling, deflecting and flipping the question on the senator is a good strategy. Maybe he's lying just because he's so afraid of the false accusations he (stupidly) thought lying would help him. Maybe he's lying because the accusations are true and he needs to lie and (unfortunate for him) he's terrible at it.

Kavanaugh's problem is he has no practice at lying but decided to do it anyway. Being a lawyer and then a judge doesn't require much if any lying at all. You represent other people, question other people, judge other people; and it's part of the job to do your best even if you suspect your client is guilty. It's not like being a politician where there are copious opportunities where lying can help and you can get really good at it if that's your thing.

Opinion not philosophy - but pretty sure Kavanaugh is toast. Mukowski and collins do not want a SCOTUS that will endanger Roe - or support state driven restrictions on abortion. Unless the FBI comes back with Dr. Ford made the whole thing up, there is enough noise around him now they can vote no, and go to their constituents with a story it was not about abortion, but about his fitness for the job and take their chances. — Rank Amateur

I'm also of the opinion that Kavanaugh is gone ... but wouldn't be surprised if they push him through to show republicans "are strong".

However, the reason for withdrawing his nomination I don't think only tangentially anything to do with the points you bring up nor even the investigation per se. Rather, it comes down to polling.

Plenty of scandals that are completely outrageous have no effect on republican polling, indeed it often polls that doing something responsible would anger the republican base.

I think the main purpose of the investigation for Trump and the other powerful republicans, is time to measure sentiment on Fox news and their base. If enough of the republican base (in particular republican women) wavers on support for Kavanaugh, that's what I see as the main factor for withdrawing Kavanaugh.

Why this might matter in this case and didn't matter for Trump (enough to lose the election) I think is that Kavanaugh is more a relateable privileged douche whipping it out (allegedly) and raping / attempted raping (allegedly) "normal" women. Trumps scandals are mostly with port stars, gold digging groupies, miss America candidates, that the average conservative women can much more easily say "they're asking to get their pussies grabbed by being in the situation" and "it's part of being super rich".

Yeah, he could've even gotten away with saying: I don't recall it happening but if it did happen I sincerely apologise to Dr. Ford. — Benkei

He didn't even have to go that far. He could have just said "did a lot of partying, drank beer, like beer, had a lot of inside jokes with my friends about vaguely understood inuendo, but I am 100% positive I never sexually assaulted anyone, that's just not me." Which is how nearly anyone that was completely innocent (especially a judge) would respond given a partying past that "doesn't look good".

Lying and misleading and "what about you huh, would like to know about if you ever blacked out", especially unnecessary lies and totally implausible lies, is much more compatible (especially for a judge who presumably knows how evidence and critical thinking work) with the state of mind of someone who is guilty and panicked that it's coming to light. Not proof, but a credible conclusion to make. As Comey points out, small lies are often a indication of large lies.

Political bias is grounds for substition in Dutch courts, whereas the political bias of a US judge is a given nowadays based on which president confirmed his position. The proof is in the pudding as to what extent politics creeps into these systems and the political drive surrounding Roe vs. Wade and Citizens United. It's quite clear from the current spectacle and the Garland no-show which system is embattled by corruption and it isn't the Dutch one. — Benkei

My point was that in a self-replacing judicial system, systemetic bias is one problem (mainly the bias of the class from which lawyers generally come from, and further selection bias). As is the case with bias, people generally don't see their own biases, it's just the "true facts". Systemic bias is usually class bias, not necessarily partisan bias. In this case, your participation in the system perhaps leads you to conclude that it is really the best system, rather than a system that is working for the time being in the Netherlands but it's possible self-replacement of judges is not the main factor leading to the good judging you see (but solid tradition and general cultural norms), that it is an exception and not a good model for countries trying to reduce bias. However, if education is free, opportunity fairly equal, class mobility is a thing, then even class biases can be significantly reduced.

However, let's say down the road social mobility stagnates, the gap between the rich and poor increase, do you think the Dutch judge-guild is going to rule unbiased in cases of typical lawyery crimes as well as the wealthy class in general, or is it more likely a judge-guild to be lenient on people from their guild and class and less lenient on the poor?

Now, I fully agree that the US selection system isn't good. Having representatives select judges isn't a good democratic process of the many to choose from. Even with representatives nominating judges the bar can be far higher (like going back to the 60 votes threshold or even higher as well US congress getting a say).

However, I believe direct voting for judges, and judge terms, is the best system. As a citizen if you vote on who judges you (or at least supreme court), this immediately legitimizes the system and in the case of the US would be a counter-weight to "the club" of wealthy politicians appointing the judges from their class that they like and surprise, surprise those judges then protect the wealthy from accountability. It is also social learning experience to consider a judges record, and formulate an idea of who you think is a good judge.

While this is all well and good - there are really only 3 people in the world that have anything to say about this Flake, Collins and Murkowski. There was not one, well maybe the possibility of one, democrat that would have voted for confirmation. Kind of makes the call for and complaints about the FBI investigation more about delay than truth. If it comes back that he actually is a choir boy and she is a liar, they still would not confirm him. And other than those 3, there is not one Republican who would vote not to confirm, again indifferent to what the FBI report says. — Rank Amateur

The Democrats have the right to think he's not the best candidate regardless. It's already been established that Kavanaugh's accessed democrat emails with a stolen password. No one seems to be refuting this.

From a conservative perspective it maybe "of course! he's a conservative judge and gonna try to get the one-up on democrats any chance he gets: should have protected that password better. Powned!"

However, it seems pretty reasonable that Democrats wouldn't view a judge that participated in hacking their server account (stealing passwords is hacking) for partisan reasons as impartial. It's totally reasonable for any Senator to have already reached their "no-vote" threshold with Kavanaugh for other reasons or then believe a better candidate exists even without any scandal (on Kavanaugh judicial record in itself compared to other potential nominees: as with any job selection process!).

So the "turn it around ploy" and accuse democrats of not voting yes if the FBI exonerates Kavanaugh doesn't work, the FBI investigation is only part of a whole. If the conservatives haven't reached a point where they would vote no while democrats have, it's totally reasonable for democrats to continue the scrutiny process as further evidence may reach R senator's threshold.

This is basic common decision making patterns. For instance, we may want to go on vacation together but we disagree on the spot. You want to go to Paris but I don't want to, simply because I think London is better. We hear a rumour that the plague has broken out in Paris, so I suggest "hmm, if the plague is in Paris, let's definitely not go there, let's try to verify this" a reasonable response is not "woa, woa, if it turns out there is no plague, you wouldn't want to go to Paris anyway, verification is pointless! bad faith, bad faith!"

It's a simple thing, but unfortunately conservative propaganda has taken it to this level.

Edit: Alex Jones also claimed not only was Obama super gay, but Michelle Obama was a man based on her being tall and having broad shoulders ... just like a man. Their kids you ask? Stone cutter child trafficking plants! Innocent or guilty, these claims didn't ruin Obama's reputation. Now, I don't agree that corporate ToS should be used to censor political debate completely deplatforming removing all their content ToS violation or no, and I also agree with Alex that the rich do meet and conspire against the public (just as Adam Smith points out as obvious fact), but doesn't make Obama's Gaygate plausible or relevant, as there's no credibility to it. Kavanaugh's problem is claims are credible, perhaps not true nor proven in a criminal court, but very plausible given reports about his drinking behaviour and material evidence like his yearbook.

If you think that these accusations haven't destroyed his reputation, whether he gets on the supreme court or not, you have to be living on Mars. That accusation will hang over his life for the rest of his life - innocent or not.. — Sam26

A few have responded, but I think the most important rebuttal here is that it comes with the territory of accepting a nomination for the Supreme court.

If you want to be one of the most powerful people in the country, far greater scrutiny than a less powerful judge or politician is part of the process, much less a normal citizen applying at a coffee shop.

If you don't want to deal with such scrutiny or don't want to deal with potential false accusations (which are a thing): don't accept nomination for the supreme court!

Also, Kavanaugh's reputation has taken a hit because it's now firmly established that his behaviour in school and college fits the pattern of irresponsible drinking. If it was just Ford's accusation without witnesses and he had no pattern of excessive drinking and there's simply no evidence, circumstantial or otherwise; maybe true, maybe false accusation; this has happened to other politicians and it didn't "destroy their reputation". Lot's of random accusations were thrown at Obama (like being full into the gay sex scene, part of some secret black stone cutters society), but nothing came of it and his reputation wasn't destroyed since there was no well established pattern of behaviour (of visiting gay bars all the time or hopping from secret society to secret society) nor any direct evidence (i.e. the media had nothing legitimate to talk about and they remained random accusations ... except for Fox new on many occasions). So again, knowing that you have a past that easily supports reckless drunken acts, it's reasonable to expect to deal with such accusations when going for a supreme court seat. And Kavanaugh was fully aware of this, as he preemptively sought support from his friends and acquaintances to make sure they wouldn't tattletale on him. In other words, he rolled the dice on whether his drinking past would come up or not. It's completely fair to Kavanaugh as he could have refused the nomination to avoid the scrutiny. So, innocent or not, it's not a case of "poor little Kavanaugh".