Trump II

[Boydstun]

 

The Monkey's Paw Administration – Robert Tracinski

[tadmjones]

Tracinski doesn't really understand viruses.

[Doug Morris]

4 hours ago, tadmjones said:

Tracinski doesn't really understand viruses.

Can you clarify?

 

[tadmjones]

Have you read his stuff? He bought the whole Covid scam and doesn’t think woke is a Marxist mind virus. 
And I used to pay him to write.

[Boydstun]

7 hours ago, tadmjones said:

Have you read his stuff? He bought the whole Covid scam and doesn’t think woke is a Marxist mind virus. 
. . .

The author of the article in the OP could additionally think the earth is flat (he does not), but it has no bearing on the merits or demerits of this particular composition.

As for your two views and derogations of people who don't buy the salvation you put forth, I'd say you are in the position with respect to me and probably most other audience of someone telling me of new arguments or evidence of the existence of God or of eternal life through letting Jesus into my heart. The challenge for such an apologist is in getting me to give any of my precious time to their renditions or reports in those two matters. The same goes for anyone telling me they have figured out that the frequency-energy relation is false, when I have more solid, established physics to spend my time on learning. Goes also for anyone proposing that the Asian Flu was a scam, and my folks should not have had me take the vaccine. Or that Covid and the vaccines are a scam (I take the vaccines; I've never gotten Covid, which is no evidence it does not exist; a lot of people died of it here in our hospital, and I'll rely on the regular medical professionals for getting to right diagnoses for patients, myself included). Well, I've spent too much time on this already. Must get to wrapping up important studies, philosophical (not skepticism sensible and not, at this time) and mathematical.

The circumstance that some Marxists were on board with raising consciousness on US history of White-Black race relations is not relevant to the truth of historical facts and some White resistance to hearing of them. About 110 years ago, headlines of the statewide newspaper of the new State Oklahoma were "Something Must Be Done about the Negro Problem," while a big newspaper in Kentucky told of a race war simmering in OK. These and the details they report are accessible for research today, and for people with some interest in history, they are eye-opening and certainly should not be suppressed by politicians getting elected for anti-woke rhetoric. Fortunately, we now have ways more effective than ever for waking people up on this history (which the White America mythologists [and mainly low church Christians] want suppressed in public education) outside of formal education. Gotta get back to work.

[tadmjones]

Better telescopes have the tendency to making the universe older and more vast, or maybe consciousness is evolving toward a recognition of a truer nature.

And perhaps you are right in that you and the wider audience and my thoughts are no longer congruent enough to cross pollinate.

Atman is Brahman

Tat twam asi

Edited March 12 by tadmjones

[whYNOT]

21 hours ago, tadmjones said:

Have you read his stuff? He bought the whole Covid scam and doesn’t think woke is a Marxist mind virus. 
And I used to pay him to write.

Well, one has to go outside of official O'ism to find the objective thinkers on Cultural Marxism, for most Objectivists this is unfamiliar territory. They do fine with what's familiar. Unlike the adage, there are old soldiers and there are bold soldiers, but you won't find old, bold soldiers - what could stop philosophers growing bolder the older they become?  

[Boydstun]

Trump II first foray into defiance of the Judicial check on the Executive – March. The US Revolution, in step with Paine, had aimed to replace kingship with law. Under the US Constitution, the law became king in America. That the courts, including the US Supreme Court, are not blithely rubber-stamping every Presidential Order to avoid the Jacksonian defiance* of the judiciary blustered up by the VP (who should be disbarred for such) is a good sign for continuation of this government form as a democratic constitutional republic. As is the Executive's decision to claim compliance (apparently a lie), rather than proclaim defiance of the court order. Court declaring against and Executive doing it anyway can bring the country to civil war, true, the quarter defending the Revolution against the quarter set on notching back the rule of law for more kingly power. But that is better, yes better, than the judiciary simply surrendering our republic.

Edited March 17 by Boydstun

[tadmjones]

Slight improvement on compliance from the prior administration,no?

[Boydstun]

2 hours ago, tadmjones said:

Slight improvement on compliance from the prior administration,no?

What particular(s) do you have in mind, Tad?

The most recent spate I know of was in the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education.*

[tadmjones]

Biden and the student loan forgiveness kerfuffle?

[Boydstun]

@tadmjones

The Biden administration took steps to reduce payments for citizens with student debt despite a Supreme Court ruling voting against a much wider plan in June 2023.

These steps were narrower in scope. The Biden administration moved forward with the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan.

The SAVE plan did not provide immediate loan forgiveness but an income-driven repayment (IDR) that reduces monthly payments and the total years you have to pay before remaining balances are forgiven, most applicable to low to middle-income borrowers.

The SAVE plans were not the same as those rejected by the Supreme Court. They did not provide immediate loan forgiveness, but instead seek to reduce monthly payments and the total number of years until payments are forgiven.

During the terms of G.W. Bush, Obama, Trump I, and Biden, many Executive Orders (and some laws) were overruled, at least in some of their parts, by the US Supreme Court. In all of those, the Executive complied, and in none of those administrations was there advocacy of ignoring adverse Court decisions, unlike with the current VP. This is good, and the effort by the present administration to present itself as continuing to abide by court orders is hopeful. 

Current cases of this sort (in reverse chron): currently

[Boydstun]

Congratulations to backers of having a Trump II, such as prominent Objectivist philosophers Leonard Peikoff and Andrew Bernstien. They, and we square Trump opponents too, are getting what was promised from Trump for II. (Where is any criticism of Trump acts these last several weeks from those two philosophers? Those Presidential acts are just fine by them? Did Objectivist leaders stay silent during Nixon's Wage and Price Controls? During J.F. Kennedy's threats to US industries, such as TV and steel companies?)

3/19/25 – BBC

Quote

 

Ahead of the call, some wondered whether Donald Trump might actually pile some pressure on Russia. After all, it's been clear for over a week that it was stalling on the ceasefire.

But there's no sign of a dressing down for Putin like the one Ukraine's leader Volodymyr Zelensky had to endure in the Oval Office a fortnight ago.

Both countries' accounts suggest nothing has changed.

Russia repeats that it wants peace. But instead of grounding its drones and silencing its guns, it's quibbling over how a still non-existent ceasefire might be monitored.

Meanwhile, it's adding even more conditions aimed at crippling Kyiv's ability to resist.

One demand is that the flow of both weapons and intelligence to Ukraine from its allies has to cease.

For Ukrainians, the only sliver of hope is that the US hasn't agreed to any of this – yet.

They can also point to the call as more proof that Russia has no interest in ending its invasion.

But all that talking will bring Ukraine minimal relief from its suffering.

For US diplomacy, too, it has to be disappointing.

But for the Kremlin it will feel like a pretty decent day, the kind unimaginable before Donald Trump returned to the White House.

 

 

[StrictlyLogical]

 “A Republic, Madam, if you can keep it.” - Benjamin Franklin

[StrictlyLogical]

15 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

 “A Republic, Madam, if you can keep it.” - Benjamin Franklin

Slight aside, I note Rand was quite good at wide integrations, and her seeing through false dichotomies, more than one of them in fact, was always breathtaking.

Many criticized Marxist Utopias by assuming their failure and evil outcomes was rooted in human failings to implement the system faithfully, Rand rightly noted their fundamental ideas were themselves evil.

A modern Objectivist cannot but help to notice that our mixed economy, bloated paternalistic government, increasingly socialist and authoritarian, wasteful, and corrupt institutions are a failure to meet the founding fathers explicit vision of the republic, which no matter how far short of an Objectivist utopia, is revelatory, true and Good.

Rand noted America had not ever met her full potential, never ripened to what she could and should be, but nonetheless she paid homage and great respect for her founders vision, adjudging that Republic as the greatest system ever conceived and executed heretofore.  She did bemoan her fall and criticized both parties contemporary to her time, the so-called left and right parties which she rightly saw as being little different and in fact is the main reason she lambasted the right, for all its posturing towards individual freedom revealed all the more, its hypocrisy and dishonesty. 

So she blasted one false dichotomy, of theory versus practicality in the context of utopian politics, out of the water, as well as another false dichotomy (of policy) between the so called left and right.

What is more impressive for her revelations is that she did this in spite of common and widely held beliefs in the culture, in academia, portrayed and disseminated by the “authorities” and the media.  In her time she was what modern spin doctors would call a conspiracy theorist, and to give them their due, those doctors have identified that indeed sometimes reality and human nature, incentive structures, imbalance and control of information can “conspire” to present a picture which is misleading.  They err in prescribing blind obedience and acceptance rather than further close inspection of reality. 

She was truly a rebel and yes a radical like no other.

I wonder why so many modern Objectivists, seem not to have taken on her approach of seeing through the false dichotomies, of making wider integrations than what the predominant culture is feeding us, of seeing beyond the narratives of theory versus practicality, left versus right, of seeing where real and complex forces of human nature and power lead institutions and nations, of being brave in the face of those who attack bold unpopular ideas.  

I think it has to do with the statistically predominant life experience the type of person who becomes a philosopher comes from.  Not all but most are sheltered, insular, academic and the same kind of errors (albeit of different content) which afflicted the Marxist Utopians, afflicts the Objectivist philosophers, it is as if “all we need is a globe of perfect rational humans then our institutions, laws, and systems, nations, trade, agreements, industries, local and global infrastructure, shipping, energy and food will all work…”
and perhaps it would, but it wont.

It cannot succeed, the systems that will succeed must take into account the global and human realities as well as the current state of things…  it must be formed to take us from here, not to assume we are somewhere we are not or never will be… and it must be focused on the Republic itself not a universal utopia which lies centuries if not millennia forward.

I wonder what Rand would say if she had lived through all the years since her death, observing, thinking, integrating, in her non naive rebellious way, what she would have to say about the best way forward given all the threats, in all their forms, throughout the world and from within.  
 

She certainly would find any fault, any little error, with the remedial cures being put in place but for sure she would be fully cognizant of the complex situation of the present moment and have a good view of the path forward.

Edited March 20 by StrictlyLogical

[Boydstun]

From "'Extremism', or the Art of Smearing" by Ayn Rand (Sept. 1964):

[Reidy]

full text