Grames

Think what you may about Jordan Petersen, but his exploration into what religion does for people at the psychological level has got to be the only correct approach.  
 

What makes it objective is the thorough consideration of all aspects of U.S. foreign policy and all possible explanations offered to get an integrated theory.  The U.S. is an empire because it has the attributes of an empire and acts like an empire. I'll quote the portion that impressed me with it's succinctness: 
Traditional Explanations
The Logic of US Foreign Policy by Sylvan and Majeski offers a consistent explanation for American interventions of the past several decades. In contrast, the usual explanations – by proponents as well as opponents of these wars – are mostly pretexts, rationalizations or at best partial aspects, as the following overview shows.
Defending democracy and human rights: This traditional justification is not very convincing, since democratic governments have been overthrown (A, M, N), autocrats have been supported (E and I), human rights and international law have been violated or violations tolerated by the US. Combating terrorism: Paramilitary groups – including Islamist organizations – have been used for decades by the US to eliminate opposing regimes (N and R). Specific threats or aggressions against the US: In retrospect, most of these claims turned out to be incorrect or made-up (#13; e.g. Tonkin, incubator babies and WMD claims). Raw materials (especially oil and gas): Even enemy states generally want to sell their raw materials to the West, but are prevented from doing so by means of sanctions or war. This is because from an imperial point of view, their independence and influence is seen as a threat. Was the Iraq war about oil? Hardly. Already prior to 2003, Iraq had supplied its oil mainly to the West; the Iraqi oil sector was not privatized after the war, and production licences were also issued to corporations in France, Russia and China (which opposed the war). Was the Syrian war about natural gas pipelines? No (see here and here). The plans for regime change and war against geopolitically independent Syria had existed for decades and were to be implemented during the so-called “Arab Spring”. (See also a comment by the Syrian president). Was the Afghanistan war about a natural gas pipeline? No. The Taliban were and are interested in the TAPI pipeline, but didn’t accept US political and military demands. Was the Libya war about oil reserves? No. Libya was already one of Europe’s most important suppliers of oil under Gaddafi, and security of supply has declined significantly since the war. Libya, however, pursued an independent and comprehensive Africa policy – financed by its oil wealth – which collided with the plans of the US and France. Was the Iranian regime change in 1953 about the nationalization of oil? No. The US tried to mediate in the British-Iranian oil dispute and urged the British to compromise. Only when Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh cooperated with the Communist Tudeh Party and opened the country to the Soviet Union did the CIA intervene. Iranian oil, however, remained nationalized even after the coup. What was the 2019 Venezuela coup attempt about? See Venezuela: It’s Not About Oil. Could renewable energies solve the raw materials problem? Hardly, because renewable energies, storage technologies and high-tech electronics require rare-earth metals, 97% of which are currently produced by China, and conflict minerals such as coltan from the Congo. The “Petro-Dollar”: The petro-dollar thesis was developed in the course of the Iraq war. However, the significance of the US dollar does not derive from oil, but from US economic power. While many states naturally prefer the stable dollar for their raw material exports, enemy states often have to switch to other currencies in order to circumvent sanctions (L, e.g. Iran). Capitalism: In 1917 Lenin described “imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism,” since capitalist states would have to conquer markets for their overproduction. However, even enemy states want to trade with the West, but are prevented from doing so by sanctions or war. Moreover, pre-capitalist states like Rome and Spain and even anti-capitalist states like the Soviet Union had already waged imperial wars. National debt: The national debt is also no reason for US wars, as the US is creating its own money by using the Fed. Moreover, wars themselves contribute immensely to national expenses. Arms industry: In 1961 US President Eisenhower warned of the increasing influence of the “military-industrial complex”. The latter is certainly one of the main profiteers of wars, but this applies as well to countries such as Russia, China, Sweden and Switzerland. Moreover, US wars are not arbitrary, but follow a certain logic; after all, even the Roman Empire did not conduct its wars merely to produce as many weapons as possible. The “Israel Lobby”: This aspect was emphasized in the book of the same name by Professors Walt and Mearsheimer. The Israeli government and pro-Israeli organizations such as AIPAC lobbied for the 2003 Iraq War and a war against Iran. As a hegemonic power, however, the US must intervene from East Asia to Central Africa and South America, and even the wars in the Middle East follow a superordinate logic. (More: The “Israel Lobby”: Facts and Myths) Neoconservatives: Another hypothesis proposes that US wars are driven by the so-called neo­con­ser­vatives. This idea is disconfirmed, for instance, by the numerous wars initiated or continued by the liberal Clinton and Obama administrations (Yugoslavia, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, etc.) »We’ve got about five or ten years to clean up those old Soviet client regimes
– Syria, Iran, Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.«
Pentagon policy chief Paul Wolfowitz to General Wesley Clark in 1991 (FORA)
 

In other words,  Trump has that in common with the people Binswanger used as examples in his essay that you linked.  But those what are called "normal people", non-intellectual ordinary Americans whom we know Rand was a great fan of because of their "sense of life" as she put it.  Rand was frustrated by America's non-intellectuality but she didn't disapprove of the country because of it.  Trump as president  is like the common man as president, and her opinions of the common (American) man are probably the most relevant to Trump.
I haven't seen much commentary on Trump's sense of life, but that is really what got him elected.  His optimism, his vivaciousness, his high energy, his guilt free enjoyment of life and his immensely entertaining Twitter taunts all make him tremendously appealing.   But these are non-intellectual factors and incomprehensible to someone committed to rationalism as a professional duty.  That would be many ARI people and often Binswanger.

This is the key point. 
I should have used the term individual rights to stay within the established jargon for Objectivist discourse on rights.  And yes i do stress the "formal".
Rights are a principle from Objectivist ethics.  
The concept of rights is most often used in a political and legal context, but it should not be forgotten that rights are an ethical principle.  You say rights are primarily legal (perhaps because of usage?), I would say rights are essentially ethical because of the epistemological derivation and justification.  I agree that rights are about action within a social context.
"Social context" is not equivalent to "legal context".  It is wrong to obtain values by lying, but not every lie can be made illegal.  The reason for that is law ought to have strict requirements for objectivity.  A man might maintain multiple girlfriends by lying, girlfriends who would not agree to be one of a harem if they knew of the others.   A man may not maintain multiple wives by lying because there is an explicit legal agreement of monogamy in marriage.  In the first example, who is a girlfriend or not and who is regarded as a girlfriend or not and even what it means to be a girlfriend are all subjective mental states of the participants.  The law cannot sort out what should be done in this case because there are no objective facts to work with.   The law can work in a case of multiple marriages because the status and obligations of the participants are objective.  This is an example where ethics can say what is right based on rights but the law must remain silent.
The range of situations and contexts which are amenable to legal rulings on rights is necessarily less than the range over which ethical judgements can be made based on rights.  This is because of the more stringent requirement of objectivity for a legal context, and also because legal systems have jurisdictions, defined finite geographic regions of power and of citizenship.
With respect to warrants, they are a procedural limitation on law enforcement actions with the goal of protecting rights.  Warrants are not themselves rights in any ethical sense.  It is necessarily valid that different procedures may apply to citizens and non-citizens if the idea of citizenship and jurisdiction means anything at all because in a reduction-to-concretes sense those differences are what it means to be a citizen or not.
 

Muslims contributed to algebra but did not invent it entirely.  A contributing factor was the increasing use of a more compact notation for numbers instead of the Roman numerals, what is now called the Arabic numerals.  But the Arabic numerals were not Arabic, they first occurred in India.  This gives the clue that Arab culture flourished when they could be peaceful trading empires.  Unfortunately for those peoples who were not part of the Arab culture, such periods of peace only occur after victorious jihads that leave behind no handy additional targets for conquest.  

Someday, in a month or so, I'll make a thread about religion and title it "Critical Semite Theory".  Then we'll find out some things.

I suspect that the cultural brainwashing could not possibly work as well as it does if children did not grow up drenched in chemicals from plants and plastics that emulated estrogens.   Excreted body fluids contain the remnants of all birth control pills ever taken, which all flow downstream into water supplies.  

I suspect that the cultural brainwashing could not possibly work as well as it does if children did not grow up drenched in chemicals from plants and plastics that emulated estrogens.   Excreted body fluids contain the remnants of all birth control pills ever taken, which all flow downstream into water supplies.  

On the right isn't that the Office of Nuclear Energy official that Biden appointed? Entrusted with our nuclear technology then caught stealing three thousand dollar Vera Bradley luggage at the airport a month into the job.
All of our lives are at risk so some criminal lunatics can benefit from diversity hiring.
But MAGA is a cult. Right.

Trump's policy positions are why he has any popularity whatsoever.  There is no cult.  MAGA doesn't end when Trump goes away.

Trump's policy positions are why he has any popularity whatsoever.  There is no cult.  MAGA doesn't end when Trump goes away.

Data and information are two very different things.  Data has some semantic context to determine what it means, but the concept of information omits semantic context.  Data depends upon consciousness but information is mind independent.  Focus upon communication as an engineering problem has shed light on this previously unappreciated aspect of existence, its information content.  But what is being measured and how to measure it?  From the first pages of Claude Shannon's paper 
A Mathematical Theory of Communication by C. E. SHANNON from The Bell System Technical Journal, Vol. 27, pp. 379–423, 623–656, July, October, 1948.
But is it physical? From
The Physical Nature of Information by Rolf Landauer from Physics Letters A 217 (1996) 188-193 (a link to a copy)
A discussion of Maxwell's demon (not to be confused with Descartes' demon) in popular science literature is available here: (Quanta Magazine: How Maxwell's Demon Continues to Startle Scientists)  Maxwell's demon has been reduced to experimental forms and demonstrates the physical nature of information.
A philosophical implication is that the Pythagorean/Platonic notion of mathematics being an independent or a priori realm apart from physical reality is refuted.  This satisfies my confirmation bias as an Objectivist that Existence exists is the broadest possible axiom and that mathematics must be about and within a prior Existence.

Information exists as a physical part of any physical system in addition to all the other physical characteristics we can observe but traditionally have not identified as "information" as such.  
All matter and energy is also information, and no information can exist apart from matter or energy.  Information is an attribute of everything that exists.  If "the information" of a system refers to the total of all information of a system then the answer is that it cannot be completely removed, only partially reduced.  Reducing the information of a system makes it more uniform and orderly in the same sense as used in thermodynamics.  The ultimate possible reduction of a system's information is reducing it to or very near the temperature of absolute zero.  For some forms of matter the removal of even the most miniscule differences of energy/information distinguishing one atom from another can provoke the formation of a Bose-Einstein condensate, multiple atoms all having the same position and the same momentum and described by a single wave function of quantum physics.  
Your "two universes" questions rely upon a premise that information is either "out there" or "in here" but which is a false dichotomy.  Information is everywhere, "out there" and "in here".  Knowledge is when the information "in here" exists in a certain relation to the information "out there", a relation broadly referred to as correspondence.  Correspondence is created by the causal chain of sensing, perceiving and finally conceiving.

I wonder if the forum will embed tweets?  Anyway, I deny being an Iranian propagandist of a useful tool of Iranian propagandists.  All Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism) need to be put down forever.
https://x.com/samparkersenate/status/1724434234264183240?

The metaphysical status of consciousness is that it is an axiom -- it must be used and asserted even in any attempt to deny it.
The existence of consciousness is known to be conditional; determining exactly what the conditions are, and why, is a task for science.

I wonder if the forum will embed tweets?  Anyway, I deny being an Iranian propagandist of a useful tool of Iranian propagandists.  All Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism) need to be put down forever.
https://x.com/samparkersenate/status/1724434234264183240?

A Festschrift for Fred D. Miller, Jr.

I’m currently going through a series of articles by Whitney Webb published on Mintpressnews.com from 2019 that talk about the history of Zionism both Christian and Jewish. She pretty much ‘brings the receipts’ to the subjects she speaks on.
I was familiar with the idea that current evangelical x-tians are for the most part Zionists , but I was not aware of the history and extent of the activism.
Apparently the end times are serious motivating factors and bankers like war and chaos , a match made in heaven.

It used to be the case that America was run by a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite.  It isn't anymore.  Those who are the elite consider themselves a people apart.  This link still works https://archive.is/5yeSC 

No, this guy is what passes for establishment today.  From https://cis.org/Steinlight
 
 

Interesting reading: American Pravda: Oddities of the Jewish Religion

Posting to subscribe to the thread.   I really don't care about this conflict because I am neither jewish nor muslim.  I would just like to remind everyone of the big picture: modern Isreal exists because of the ideology of Zionism and jewish supremacism embedded within it.  If Zionism is invalid then anything which is a consequence of Zionism is invalid.

Ukraine will never get another dime from the American congress now that the new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is so adamantly against it.   Ukraine cannot continue without American funding.  Ukraine will require time to accept the inevitable, and Russia will now press its advantage and no longer feels pressure to negotiate.  Therefore much territory will change hands on the ground over the next few months as Ukraine runs out of ammunition, men and money for salaries and Swiss bank accounts.