necrovore
-
Posts
519 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
62
Posts posted by necrovore
-
-
3 hours ago, DavidOdden said:
My judgment is that adherence to that purpose here is not strict, and it has gotten much looser since I first joined about 20 years ago.
It seems like some of the most controversial threads of late have been on point; the main question is always how to discover what the facts are. This can get into questions of what sources you trust, and under what conditions you trust them.
Objectivism obviously reaches different conclusions depending on what facts you put into it; if Objectivism were impervious to facts, it would be arbitrary!
It's proper to reject claims of fact when they clash with lots and lots of well-founded abstractions, though, the way perpetual-motion machines clash with the known laws of physics.
It's also proper to identify situations where a fact really doesn't make any difference, like whether Abraham Lincoln ever dyed his hair.
3 hours ago, DavidOdden said:Every person who contributes here should be able to articulate their justification for contributing, to say what value you receive in exchange for your posts.
It should be possible to integrate everything without contradiction. So I think part of having an active mind is to read a lot and see if you can integrate what you are reading with what you know. (This includes identification of claims as falsehoods or as arbitrary, where appropriate).
Writing some of your conclusions and seeing how people answer can be valuable and thought-provoking as well.
3 hours ago, DavidOdden said:I might, in another incarnation, contemplate whether just leaving the thread open does any harm.
My inclination was to think it would not have done any harm. For myself, I figured I had said my piece, and had nothing further to say.
So as far as I was concerned the thread was already dead and it was time for me to move on to some other topic.
I suppose there could be "vampire" threads that could refuse to die and suck the lifeblood out of the rest of the forum... such a thread would need a stake through its heart... but was this thread really one of them?
(Probably the worst thing is unneeded repetition. I don't like reading the same thing over and over, and I don't like saying the same thing over and over, either...)
3 hours ago, DavidOdden said:There have been many fora for Objectivism, most of which have fallen into complete inactivity.
Often people leave not because of the forum itself but because they have a "life event" such as a new job, a marriage, birth of a child, or a funeral. Life events are why I left and came back, and not because of anything wrong with the board itself. Right now I have time to participate but other times I have just been too busy. If the administrator of a board has such a life event, the board itself may come to an end.
This sort of thing is not the fault of the content.
People can also leave because they are no longer interested in the topic, or because they find the forum "unfriendly." Moderation can help with keeping things on-topic and civilized.
3 hours ago, DavidOdden said:ask yourself if you would want to be associated with that group and if not, why not? My judgment is, “No: crappy content”
That sounds a lot like "guilt by association."
Lots of, e.g., Metallica fans, don't necessarily like each other.
A forum is not like a magazine where the content can be completely controlled (for quality or anything else). It is proper to remove spam, and stuff that is off-topic could probably also be removed. But you'd know it was off-topic because nobody who is interested in this board in particular would be interested in it.
-
51 minutes ago, DavidOdden said:
First: do you have a factual basis for that claim (I assume you're not just intuiting what you think reality is) – gimme a number, and what nation has the second largest government?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_government_budget
$6.4 trillion dollars for the US. The runner up is China at $3.9 trillion dollars (based on currency exchange rate).
And I think US spending is higher than ever, even higher than during World War Two, even adjusting for inflation. So put those two facts together.
51 minutes ago, DavidOdden said:Law provides checks on the power of government employees.
In theory but not necessarily in practice. Who is in charge of enforcing these laws? Who watches the watchers?
51 minutes ago, DavidOdden said:The problem is ... the scope of government in the first place.
Agreed. (This is why I think calls for "term limits" are missing the point.)
51 minutes ago, DavidOdden said:Evidence is strong that Mayorkas is not part of some permanent government: he was first appointed 3 years ago, and at most could serve another 5 years.
That's not what "permanent government" really means.
Individual bureaucrats shift around from job to job, and also sometimes they rotate between working for the government and working in the private sector (like helping companies with "compliance"), but that doesn't change anything much. They all have roughly the same opinions about The Way Things Should Be Done (which naturally includes the present and increasing scope of government), and they get into positions to enforce those opinions.
These are largely people whose careers keep them in the government or pretty close to it, and in positions of power and influence, at all times.
-
22 hours ago, DavidOdden said:
Clearly, this permanent government of which you speak isn’t composed of the executive, legislative or, realistically the judiciary. What I’d like to know is, what or who is this permanent government in the US? I suppose you might be talking of career military and civil service employees. In what sense to the various park rangers, TSA agents, clerks in the bureaucracy, embassy grunts and so on constitute a government?
The US now has the largest government ever in world history.
The White House, the Congress, and the Supreme Court together make up less than 1% of it.
Although there are millions of low-level "grunts," the people at the cabinet-level and just below that probably each have more power than any single Senator or Representative, even under normal circumstances, and right now they probably have much more power. Unchecked, unaccountable power. And some of these people each have annual budgets larger than any one billionaire could accumulate over his lifetime.
If you want some particular evidence you can see where Mayorkas told a House panel that they weren't showing him the proper respect. I'm sure that's how all the cabinet-level people feel. (The House has decided to impeach Mayorkas but I don't think the Senate will go along with it.)
We don't really have a President right now, he's too busy drooling or eating ice cream or shaking hands with people who aren't there, so of course the cabinet-level people are running things, and the President probably does whatever they want him to, which is just the kind of President they prefer to have.
-
2 minutes ago, DavidOdden said:
I see. Well, I am not a fan of competing jurisdictions, there ought to be fundamental unity in the political and legal system, where individual rights are protected irrespective of where you live. By eliminating municipalities and states as political entities, we would go a long ways towards a system of government that protects the rights of individuals rather than the ‘rights’ of states.
There's a good reason for having states and "competing jurisdictions," too, though: suppose you have Big City with 90% of the population and Little City with 10%. It might be better if each one gets one vote in the Senate rather than having it done proportionally by population, primarily because for example there could be a vote on whether Big City gets to dump its garbage in Little City, and it passes, 90% to 10%, and a vote on whether Big City gets to collect a special tax from residents of Little City, and it passes, 90% to 10%... this sort of thing is also why we have an electoral college.
Locally-sourced juries aren't always biased. You could imagine that Little City, being somewhat rural, is frequently visited by bears who may attack people, and so maybe 5% of people carry Bear Guns to scare or incapacitate the bears to prevent this from happening. In Big City, though, there are no bear attacks, so somebody carrying a Bear Gun would likely be carrying it for some other reason. A prosecutor, playing to a Big City jury, can make it sound very suspicious that the alleged perpetrator was carrying a Bear Gun, but a Little City juror would understand that the Bear Gun proves nothing. Especially if the alleged crime occurred in Little City in the first place.
However, there's a difference between such a jury's "bias" and the bias in Washington, DC, and it's similar to the difference between a statement of fact (like what kinds of precautions are necessary on ships or in cold weather) and a statement of opinion (which is broader, more ideological, in nature). It would be good to move a trial if the residents of Little City are all of the same religion and there are religious overtones in the case that may overshadow the legal issues (and cause conviction of an innocent person or acquittal of a guilty one without proper reasoning). It would not be a good reason to move the case if Little City has a lot of harbors and the residents know a lot about the fishing industry and about what kinds of precautions ship captains should ordinarily take.
3 minutes ago, DavidOdden said:An alternative to the current unqualified juror problem is to develop a better system of voire dire, to identify individuals who are willing to actually apply the law rather than reach an ideologically-driven conclusion.
I am concerned that corrupt people in power could make that into a sort of political or religious "purity test" which would make the jury system less fair.
A better solution would be to pursue a separation of state and education, so that jurors might have a better chance of being better educated. Without access to government money and power, educational institutions would have to earn credibility by being right in reality.
The notion of looking down one's nose at the "ignorant masses" sounds very much like Plato, and it should be borne in mind that Plato's philosophy did not lead to a free country. Ultimately, by means of Christianity, it led to the Dark Ages.
-
1 hour ago, DavidOdden said:
The other popular sense is the completely subjective “looks like me” sense, that some individual may share with you beliefs, interests, race, religion, hobbies or whatever.
The idea is for the jury to be representative of the country (or at least the voters), not the defendant, and such "representativeness" implies that if the country is 50% Democrat then juries should be 50% Democrat (on average), that sort of thing. If Republicans and Democrats are bitterly divided about political issues, and they can still agree to convict or acquit a defendant, then that greatly reduces doubts in other people's minds about that conviction or acquittal. The same thing applies to Establishment vs. anti-Establishment and so forth.
1 hour ago, DavidOdden said:This worked in favor of the accused in cases of racist murders of Blacks in the south in the 60’s, where all of the murderer’s neighbors had the same view as the accused, so they did not consent to convicting and punishing the murderers.
So the jury wasn't really representative but was chosen from all one side of the racism issue.
There can be simpler instances of the same thing where for example all the jurors watch the same TV news, and the TV news has taken one side and not presented the other side, so jurors might be prejudiced because of that.
Usually this sort of thing is why there is a jury selection process, and why a court can and should consider "change of venue" motions to have the trial moved to a place where a local population bias would not apply.
1 hour ago, DavidOdden said:Consent of the governed is irrelevant to the question of fairness.
The reason "consent of the governed" exists is that it's another way to hold the government accountable for its actions. This, in turn, is necessary because, "benevolent universe" aside, reality itself won't necessarily do anything: if the government decides to kill everyone on Earth, reality per se isn't going to stop them. This is why people need to be able to.
I am aware, of course, that individual rights should not be subject to vote. Reality isn't subject to vote, either (and existence exists even if you don't consent to it). I think that if 95% of the population opposed individual rights (either certain ones or all of them), a government trying to preserve them by dispensing with jury trials would technically be engaged in an "occupation," and the days of those individual rights would be numbered anyway unless the population could be persuaded to change their minds.
Reality is an advantage for the government in this sort of situation: individual rights would end up being good for the country, and the population might learn that it can do just fine without opposing them. So the opposition would wither away in a few generations, especially if it doesn't have access to coercion, because there is no such thing as an honest revolt against reason.
The same thing applies in reverse if the population supports individual rights (either certain ones or all of them) and the government opposes them. The government could dispense with jury trials in order to maintain the control that it thinks is necessary, but if it has to resort to that, it is engaged in a sort of "occupation." However, if reason is not on its side, it will not be able to persuade the population, and will have to resort to more and more force (or fraud). Meanwhile, the bad consequences of their policies will cause conditions to deteriorate regardless of how successful the force and fraud are.
-
29 minutes ago, DavidOdden said:
the only cure for jurors subjectively ignoring the law is to eliminate trial by jury (maybe not a bad idea, but a huge change in the US legal system requiring constitutional amendment)
I'd say it's a bad idea to get rid of juries, because of something about government having to be based upon the "consent of the governed."
However, in order for a jury system to fulfill its function of ensuring "consent of the governed," juries would have to be representative of "the governed," and it seems that the juries in Washington DC are not. They have a clear pro-establishment bias, probably because government bureaus and contractors are the biggest employers in Washington DC.
Clearly it would not be fair if a government agency (such as the SEC, FDA, etc.) accused you of something, and at trial all the jurors just happened to work for that same government agency. But all the government agencies agree on a lot of things (including the necessity of their own existence and the general way they do things). The things they agree about are part of a framework, and that's the same framework they will use to determine your innocence or guilt.
-
34 minutes ago, AlexL said:
A. The implication of your wording above is that "official, authorized(??), mainstream narrative" is mostly wrong, which in itself is a conspiracist claim😁
The "mainstream narrative" is subject to the same standards as any other "narrative" -- and sometimes fails them, especially lately.
34 minutes ago, AlexL said:B. Yes, the labeling "conspiracist can be used to intimidate etc., but the fact that it is used does not necessarily imply intimidation: it can be a true factual statement.
I still think it's psychologizing.
On the other hand there are cranks, quacks, and crackpots out there, and the only way to identify them is that their claims clash with reality.
If you have a proper hierarchy of knowledge then you can use abstractions you have already proved to identify false claims. However, this only works to the extent that your abstractions are solid all the way down. Lots of people reason as if their beliefs have been "proved" when those beliefs are not true at all.
34 minutes ago, AlexL said:The respective viruses allegedly do not exist, the bad and greedy medical industry invented them, and epidemics, for enormous profits at our expense. It is obviously a conspiracy; it had to start at lest 120 years ago (Poliovirus, 1909) and had to involve, since, dozen or hundreds of millions of medical professionals spreading this alleged fiction.
In a mixed economy, it's easy to imagine that corrupt people could work their way up to the top. These days I'm not so sure it's even necessary to imagine, because you can look at the people at the top and see that they are corrupt.
However, it is possible to have a medical industry without corruption, and I think such an industry would accept the existence of viruses on the basis of the scientific evidence.
34 minutes ago, AlexL said:It is a shame to refer to that person and to the book approvingly and with no caveats - on this Objectivism forum.
Well it's a good thing we have people like you here to point this stuff out
But really, it does not seem that @monart is claiming to speak on behalf of Ayn Rand or Objectivism on these matters, and also, as long as it is an open forum, we don't have to worry too much about falsehoods going uncontested.
Besides, people shouldn't believe everything they read, anyway.
-
Apparently the zombie apocalypse campaign was older than I thought... it's possible that it was brought to my attention years after it started but before it retired.
(Not editing my original post because of possibility of messing up the link.)
-
29 minutes ago, Doug Morris said:
Can you give some examples of the CDC saying that?
-
55 minutes ago, EC said:
That would mean those people would have to had advanced knowledge years prior to the pandemic of the existence of the covid virus
Well there was also all that "cute and campy" stuff, before Covid-19, about how we should prepare for a "zombie apocalypse." Remember any of that? That was coming out of the CDC and being circulated among other government agencies, but it also came out in the news.
-
7 hours ago, monart said:
I'm curious: Why wouldn't it surprise you? And what would it mean for this SC2/covid controversy if Mr Eckert were working for CDC/FDA?
I wrote that in jest; it's an exaggeration. However, it's a known propaganda technique to discredit the truth by associating it with various crank theories, so that when people encounter the truth, they will think that it's just another crank theory.
This is similar to the way that if a group wants to peacefully protest something, you could plant some violent people in amongst the protesters, so that the whole group can then be blamed for the violence.
I remember seeing a lot of news in the mainstream media about "anti-vaxxers," starting maybe a year or so before Covid-19 appeared. This news was about people who objected to the requirement that their children, in order to be enrolled in school, have to be vaccinated for polio, mumps, measles, etc., and usually it was stated that their objections were religious in nature, or based on the (disproved I think) notion that vaccines cause autism, and so it was based on crackpottery. I remember at the time being puzzled about why their stories were being "pushed" so much by the news media. Of course, once Covid-19 came out, it became obvious: news about the "anti-vaxxers" had been spread deliberately, in advance, so that when the Covid-19 "vaccine" was introduced on short notice, anybody who objected to it, even doctors, even if their objections were scientifically legitimate, could be declared to just be more "anti-vaxxers," i.e., cranks who could be ignored.
When you have populations of millions of people, it is often possible to find cranks rather than having to create them. (I am inclined to think that Mr. Eckert is probably a crank, if he objects to the whole science of virology... I do remember a writer republished on Zero Hedge claiming that "there is no such thing as a virus," but I don't know if that's him, but it is a crank thing to say.) So it's unlikely that Mr. Eckert is actually a CDC or FDA "plant" put there for the purpose of discrediting others. It could be that people at the CDC and FDA are deliberately trying to give him more prominence than he deserves, deliberately promoting him to make people think he's is somehow typical of the "alternatives" to themselves, in order to get people to discredit all alternatives to the CDC and FDA.
(I also remember in one of Ayn Rand's essays, she pointed out how "The John Birch Society" was lumped in with some other things it didn't belong with, and that is an example of the same sort of technique at work.)
It is because of the use of propaganda techniques like this that you have to think when reading alternative media, but this kind of propaganda is also why you have to read the alternative media in the first place.
-
In defense of Dr. Kammerer I would say that knowledge is hierarchical.
It's much easier to prove the existence of Covid-19 if you can count on, say, a science of virology, which has, over a period of decades, developed techniques to identify the existence of various viruses.
If Mr. Eckert acknowledges the validity of virology and merely disputes the particular virus or family of viruses, then the proof is probably easy, for a competent virologist.
It becomes much harder if Mr. Eckert disputes the validity of the whole science of virology, because then Dr. Kammerer would have to prove that before getting to the part about Covid-19.
Virology itself rests on other discoveries, and if Mr. Eckert disputes those, too, then Dr. Kammerer could be in for a very long slog.
The same kind of thing happens when trying to prove evolution to Christians.
-
-
13 minutes ago, DavidOdden said:
So then why can’t I sue a contractor for defective workmanship 20 years ago?
Well, good news: if the contractor changes careers into politics, and runs for office, and is in the wrong political party -- then you can!
-
1 hour ago, DavidOdden said:
Not every bad idea is Marxist. The Republican party is full of bad ideas and bad philosophy, but it isn’t all Marxist.
Bad precedents set in the course of persecuting Trump can also be used by religionists later.
-
13 hours ago, Boydstun said:
(I'd imagine Mr. Trump's former boast that you can grab 'em by the pussy if you are a star [entered as pertinent evidence in the present case] probably added some weight against his claim of innocence in the present case.)
It's completely improper to consider such a thing to be "evidence."
It's like saying Johnny Depp's performance in Sweeney Todd is "evidence" that he cut someone's throat.
Some rap music has lyrics that convey certain attitudes toward women, which would probably not look good if those rappers were accused of rape, but I think it's improper to consider those lyrics as "evidence" that the rappers committed rape. It's entirely arguable that the rappers say that stuff, not because it's true, but because they think it sells more records.
It seems even more improper that such statements should be used against Trump, but similar statements made by his accuser (and cited in the William Brooks piece), which would tend to reduce her credibility, didn't seem to be considered.
-
-
I remember learning as a kid that the reason people get colds and flu during the winter is not because they go outside and get it, but because they stay inside with other people who may have colds or flu. This is what allows colds and flu to spread.
On that basis, I would have expected lockdowns to increase people's exposure to Covid. Something like walking on the beach alone, which would have gotten you arrested in some places during the lockdowns, is actually safer than being locked in a building with other people.
-
p.s. @George Adams CPA MBA I did not see a Table of Contents for your book. Is there one publicly available? I like to have a vague idea what's in a book when I'm considering a purchase.
-
1 hour ago, George Adams CPA MBA said:
Kant’s idea of built in concepts is parallel to Noam Chomsky’s idea of a universal grammar built into human brains.
The usual argument for that idea is that young children frequently use nouns and verbs correctly without knowing what "nouns" and "verbs" are. The problem with that argument is that such children spend a lot of time around adults who use nouns and verbs correctly because they do know what they are, and thus the children have a lot of examples, and they will develop a sense of what matches up with the examples and what doesn't, and they also get corrections from the adults.
I'll agree with EC that "there are no built-in concepts." The senses have certain features "built in" such as the ability of your eyes to automatically adapt to the ambient light level, but these are not "concepts." They are pre-conceptual.
If there is something in the brain like some kind of pre-emphasis for nouns and verbs, then it is also pre-conceptual.
34 minutes ago, George Adams CPA MBA said:Kurt Godel's Incompleteness Theorem's showed that some propositions in math can neither be proved nor disproved. The piercing eyes of Math have a blind spot.
In Ayn Rand's philosophy there are two kinds of propositions (not confined to math) which can neither be proved or disproved.
The first kind is axioms. Unlike mathematical axioms, philosophical axioms are self-evidencies which have to be used and asserted even in any attempt to deny them. The three main axioms are existence, consciousness, and identity, although there are a handful of corollary axioms.
The second kind is the arbitrary, which are statements designed to be impervious to evidence or proof. Kurt Godel discovered the mathematical equivalent of those.
34 minutes ago, George Adams CPA MBA said:Quantum Mechanics, especially Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, shows that there are limits to knowledge at the physical level.
Before quantum mechanics was discovered, our knowledge was even more limited
I don't think Ayn Rand made any claims that require (or promise) such "unlimited" knowledge. In fact, I think she sided with Aristotle in saying that the infinite only denotes a potentiality; any actual quantity is finite.
----
I should recommend a couple of books:
Leonard Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand.
David Harriman's Induction in Physics and Philosophy.
-
It's likely the government is covering something up, but I think it's outlandish to conclude that the virus doesn't exist. More likely it does, but the reason the government knows it exists, is something like, certain people created it in a lab. The government doesn't want that fact to get out. They want to deny responsibility. So what you get is, "The virus exists, but we can't tell you how we know that."
I suppose some people think that if they make up some crazy story, they can pressure the government into disproving it by revealing the truth. That doesn't work.
-
On 2/3/2024 at 2:18 PM, Jon Letendre said:
One thing that really sticks out to me is that in my experience with leftists, Trump haters, democrats, liberals, they never, and I mean never, bring facts to me that I didn't already know about.
Whereas they are constantly responding to me with "what? I never heard that. You think that's true? Where could I look into that?" LATER: "OK, so it is true, but so what?" This happens to me over and over and over. They can't immediately see the SO WHAT because of SO MUCH more they don't know about, but good luck explaining any that to one of them.
They are not informed.
AND THAT'S OK.
But why they won't take the responsible and logical next step of not voting I truly don't understand.
I don't think it's OK. It's evasion, pure and simple.
Among some people familiar with Objectivism this evasion sometimes takes the form of "don't look in the closet, because anything you see in there is arbitrary and has to be dismissed from rational consideration."
When the mainstream media is very biased and refuses to report facts that don't support their point of view, one has no choice but to look for those facts in alternative media. It's difficult to dig through alternative news sources where facts that you can't find anywhere else are intermingled with articles about the Second Coming of Jesus and who knows what else. The alternative press consists of "rags"; it consists of scruffy rebels with small budgets; all they have is whatever facts they can find to report on. If they find important facts, they try to get them out, and usually have to square off against official and unofficial censorship in order to do it. But then they'll sometimes reach very wrong conclusions with those facts, and this is because many of their abstract principles are not reality-based, and are neither mainstream nor Objectivist. The facts they report are never the ones that poke the holes in their own mistaken principles, but they are, nevertheless, facts, and often poke holes in establishment principles.
What you have to do to find out the truth amounts to "rag-picking." You have to go through the "rags" anyway. Their facts are often undisputed, but their principles may be wrong. Keep the facts, discard the Jesus. And of course discard the antisemitism and the UFO aliens.
The thing to understand about "alternative facts" is that they are not alternatives to facts; they are facts that the establishment doesn't want anyone to know and would prefer everyone to ignore.
Maybe some people haven't learned to distinguish between statements of fact (which can, in principle, be verified, or wrong) and statements of opinion (which rest on abstractions, and those abstractions might be true, false, or arbitrary). Or perhaps they know how to make the distinction but find it to be a lot of effort. Or maybe they think that, since the rag-writers' principles are wrong, their facts have to be wrong, too. It's much easier to go along with the mainstream press where everything is neatly packaged for you and you don't have to think about it.
And then there are people who have become part of the "aristocracy" in some way or other, and they guard their positions jealously, and they need to be seen looking down their noses at certain facts because those facts are socially unacceptable among the aristocracy. (The aristocracy seems to include the legal profession, which has become an aristocracy itself, and has developed its own principles and traditions which are older than Objectivism, some of which are probably incorrect in light of it, and will be difficult to make correct.)
There is one more important thing.
Most people understand deductive logic and reasoning, so they start with certain principles and then plug in the facts and deduce downward from there. Deduction has been well-understood since ancient Greece, and it's also easy to write a deductive argument on a piece of paper and check it for correctness.
However, there is also an inductive side to reasoning, and this is not as well understood -- but almost all of the arguments for Objectivism are inductive in nature. Induction is the only way to come up with new principles. Induction is why Ayn Rand wrote novels and essays and not just syllogisms. Induction is like figure-and-ground to deduction; whereas deduction requires examples, induction requires for its proof an absence of counter-examples. So it is reasonable, as part of an inductive argument, to show that you have really looked for counter-examples, everywhere, systematically, and not found any. This is also how you prove Newton's Laws. This is why evasion is a fallacy that you don't much hear about outside of Objectivism. Evasion is almost completely inapplicable to deduction. Evasion "works" to prop up incorrect abstractions by suppressing the facts that would disprove them. The arbitrary, in turn, is just a larger example of evasion; it ensures the necessary absence of counter-examples by suppressing all of reality. The arbitrary is that which is impervious to evidence. You can't identify something as arbitrary unless you can identify at least the type of evidence that it would be impervious to; it's even better if you can identify the evidence itself.
But that requires reading those "rags"...
-
2 minutes ago, Doug Morris said:
Can you tell me what this stands for and how I can find it? When I tried I got a lot of stuff about some bank and a little about the Hawaii Bicycling League.
-
37 minutes ago, Boydstun said:
Trump has been adjudicated in a civil trial to have committed a rape.
Because the standard of proof is lower in civil trials -- "preponderance of the evidence" instead of "beyond a reasonable doubt."
You may remember they found no shortage of people who were "raped" by Kavanaugh, too. Or by Julian Assange. Or by Russell Brand. Anybody who is inconvenient to the government.
The law under which Trump was convicted had been modified recently in order to make convictions like that possible.
Suppression in Belarus
in International Politics
Posted · Edited by necrovore
A true power-luster wouldn't be satisfied with catching murderers and thieves.
A lot of is is that Congress doesn't really write laws that say "such and such behavior shall be illegal" anymore; instead nowadays they write laws to create an agency which will have such-and-such purpose and have such-and-such budget. The head of such an agency will end up with a great deal of discretionary power because they can write pretty much whatever regulations they want as long as they can plausibly claim that the regulations are intended to have the goals Congress has decided for that agency.
With legislation like that, how could a Deep State not form?
The "Chevron deference" is part of the problem, but the real problem is that a law that merely lists the purposes of the agency and doesn't itself clearly list what behaviors are allowed to the citizenry and what are prohibited, should be held as unconstitutionally vague.
In some ways Congress is delegating its power to the agency, and that is also a problem because it violates the separation of powers (because the same agency is part of the executive branch, and therefore writes the regulations and enforces them, and some agencies even have their own special courts, too). This is how you get an unlimited, unaccountable government.
Some government agencies have been around for decades. They have become "permanent" in the sense that they are difficult to get rid of. They exercise government power, they have very little oversight, and what oversight they do have is very slow and not always effective. They have identities as institutions (and an identity and culture as a group of institutions) even if the individuals in them change roles every now and then.