What are your thoughts? — Igitur

Religion is like opium. People take it to keep from curling up in a ball on the floor in the face of adversity like the death of a child. The main threat to religion is good healthcare. So if you look out and find people living with little to no safety net, more religion is on the way.

If Harris does make a major misstep in the next few weeks, I wonder who the powers that be will replace her with so that I can know who to vote for. — Hanover

You're going to vote Democrat?

Southern oceans absorb 25% more CO2 than previously thought.

This is a good thing.

No, I don't disagree that the rhethoric is anti-establishment. — Echarmion

Exactly. His rhetoric gave him so much power that he seemed untouchable. That's a social current worth examining.

People can openly express and complain about real issues, and then perpetuate them. — creativesoul

I don't think you understand. He believes in authoritarianism. I get that you're not taking it seriously. I do, though. I don't think it's an act.

That's part of "why" I think that. — creativesoul

He openly expresses pessimism about democracy. That doesn't sound like a schtick to me. It sounds like something else.

And you're happy to let Americans live however they like. :up:

I didn’t say they should. — NOS4A2

Cool. You're quite ready to live and let live.

I am outraged that people are given power based on race and gender, yes. You’re not? — NOS4A2

So you're outraged. Why should other people live by your rules?

I have a conscience. What does yours say about giving people power on the basis of their race and gender? — NOS4A2

Your conscience is telling you to be outraged at American politics? For real?

Once again, proving the above. At least attempt not to be ethically disgusting. — AmadeusD

You could stand to grow a sense of humor, Amadeus. :razz:

You don’t care about a race and gender-based selection process in politics? — NOS4A2

Why do you care? It's not even your country.

It's racist and sexist — NOS4A2

They don't think so. Why does your opinion matter when it's not even your county?

Tbf — AmadeusD

You can't.

People should not be appointed to office based on their race and gender. — NOS4A2

Why not?

She was, in fact, a "DEI hire. — NOS4A2

So?

It's nostalgia as a substitute for the future. — Echarmion

It was anathema to neoliberalism, so anti-establishment. I think we're just quibbling over who the establishment actually is?

Yes, creating a "flexible" labor market was supposed to help avoid stagflation episodes. That meant less job security. It wasn't just evil doers on high, there was a theory.

Oh, and Vance's memoir is pretty well written. He's a fraud though. Profit and power are his sole motives. — creativesoul

Why do you think that?

A counter-movement would be one that develops a positive vision for the future. — Echarmion

If you listened to his speeches in 2016, the message was: we're going back to the 1960s and 70s in terms of job security. That was the positive vision he outlined. Obama commented on how his vision was impossible because the industrial infrastructure of America is already gone. I take it you missed that aspect of his first campaign.

Trump as a person is not, or was not, part of the establishment. But since he also did not come with any formed policy, his actions ended up being mostly in favour of the republican establishment.

He has the irreverence and the populist instincts of a revolutionary, but not the conviction. So I guess we could say that he is not an establishment candidate, but he also doesn't care about being anti-establishment. As long as the establishment - in this case the republicans - stroke his ego he won't move against them. — Echarmion

i agree. I'm just more focused on what it means that there was so much popular support for him. He was telling people what they wanted to hear. Let's focus again on what that was: what did they want to hear? Think about it terms of social forces instead of personalities. That's what I've been doing since he was elected, anyway. Focusing specifically on him as if that's going to tell you what's happening is forest for the trees.

So if you think of Trump vs Harris in terms of the social forces involved, how do you read it?

Imagine a snake that sees it's own tail, but doesn't recognize that it's seeing itself. At the point of meeting, there are two, but it's also only one.

Or imagine a diamond with many faces. Each face is the whole diamond.

Unity and duality are in opposition and two sides of the same coin. It can't be one, but not the other.

I'm not quite that generous. Significant brain damage, but recoverable after at least 4 years of intensive therapy for people who have brain injuries. Additional therapy will be needed to rehabilitate his faulty morals and his poor comprehension of the reality situation. Since his misfortunes are self-induced, he would need to pay for this out of his own funds. Once he's impoverished by the medical industry, Medicaid will kick in to cover some (???) level of services. — BC

:lol:

When I read that Vance's memoir is a good way to understand how Trump was elected, I thought about a conversation I had with a woman from Kentucky. The way she described it, heroin addiction is like a plague there. This was back when it was coming in from Afghanistan, so I don't know if it's improved since then. I'm not sure what to do with those puzzle pieces.

Right, but that makes it a power grab, I don't see how it's anti-establishment. These are not revolutionaries, they're part of the elite cementing their (relative) power. — Echarmion

I guess you could call Trump elite, but I wouldn't say he's part of the establishment, which is those who set foreign and domestic policies. His power came from public support that was so strong that establishment Republicans dared not antagonize him. In that way he's anti-establishment. The only reason he's not a revolutionary is that he couldn't pull it off. No?

Thoughts about Kamala Harris? — Shawn

Not a chance

That's their rhetoric in any event. Though in my view, the republican party can hardly be anti-establishment given that they're half the establishment. It's not like they want to abolish their own position, they intend to remain an elite. They just want to extend their power. — Echarmion

They're actually making lists of loyalists to plop into critical spots. I think they're serious. This isn't the old Republican party.

What's different is also that the rising right wing movement is not traditionally conservative but progressive in the sense that they want to actively change society. — Echarmion

Exactly. The Democrats stand for the status quo. The parties switched roles (again).

We could say that the establishment is centrist by definition. — Echarmion

I don't think that's true. The political pendulum swings and the establishment is a dragging reflection of that. This is why people like Vance want to actually change out the government's employees in a far reaching way. He wants to get rid of everyone who refused Trump's orders the last time around. They're saying the government needs to be friendlier to the Right. They mean they want obedience.

I think economic anxieties are a big part of it everywhere. — Echarmion

Which is weird considering the economy is booming.

I think what you're seeing is the trend away from the old left / right distinction and the movement towards a system of multiple elites with their respective supporting and opposed groups, as put forward by Piketty. — Echarmion

People are still using right/left terminology, though. It's just that they've redefined it. The new American right is skeptical of liberal democracy, which would have been a blasphemous position previously. They're populist and anti-establishment. They basically want to fire everyone in the US government who isn't loyal to their cause. They've already talked about how to defy the SCOTUS if they resist this transition. I don't know who the significant elites are in this situation, but it looks like the existing establishment has nothing to gain from this and quite a bit to lose.

The situation used to be that young people tend to vote against the elite, i.e. for the left. This is no longer the case as experience in Europe already shows. — Echarmion

I think that's because the present establishment is very centrist, isn't it? The rising movement is rightist. That's a big switch from the old days. Everything used to be pretty moderate.

In addition, the big wedge issue that defines politics in the non-asian industrialised nations seems to be migration. There seems to be a culture shift where younger voters, traditionally more accepting of social changes, including migration, are now more pessimistic about it. — Echarmion

For the American right, this is specifically about jobs. They want to stop immigration and force out all the illegal aliens presently here. That would up-end the economy, so it's bizarre that they're actually thinking about doing that.

Scott Soames did a pretty detailed analysis of the private language argument and concludes that it's not an argument per se. It's more of an exploration of the consequences of ever morphing memory, the open endedness of the patterns of thought, and the nature of confidence.

In line with that is the pretty fascinating issues Kripke sees arising from it. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but it's not just misinterpreted voodoo either. One interesting idea related to it is that just as we model the world around us in the present and create hypotheses about the future, our accounts of the past are also constructed. It's like: you're not just modeling the world out there, you're modeling yourself!

:joke:

I watched that whole thing dude.

This Missouri?

Republicans will be anti-labor, no matter the elegies written. Trump already proved this with his presidency. — Moliere

I think we're watching the Republican party going into metamorphosis. The message Trump won with was that China and immigrants are the reason for the diminished security of blue collar workers. The answer was to stop immigration from the south, put tariffs on China's goods, stop spending money on foreign wars, and withdraw from NATO. None of that is Reagan. This is all stuff that would have been palatable to Democrats in the 1980s, loosely, anyway. Instead of seeing government as the problem, the Republican agenda going forward will be to put Trump allies in all corners of the civil service including the Pentagon so the next time Trump wants help, nobody is pushing back. There won't be a coup. The presidency will just change into a rightist instrument.

Now that this blueprint is in play, it's energizing the Republican party, propelling the change. Even if Biden or Harris wins this time, Vance will be there next go round with the same network ready to go. And if Trump wins, all bets are off.

The key to understanding how this is happening is to see the similarities between young Democrats and young Republicans. If you listen closely, you'll notice that they're saying the same thing: get out of Ukraine, get out of the Middle East, and focus on Main St. The people who are trying to say no to that are mainstream Democrats: Bill Clinton's people with their NAFTA and reduced support for the poor.

Look behind the curtain of Trump's bullshit and you'll see a pending American reformation. That's how the puzzle pieces are coming together for me. How about you?

Vance is hyper-isolationist and concerned with real wages. The two issues are linked for him. It's like he wants to turn the USA into a bubble country. He's what Trump has been missing: brains and a real social agenda.

I just brought up climate change because that's the issue that made me start thinking about abandoning democracy. It's wild for me to see the Republican party morphing before my eyes into a party that embraces the dark Enlightenment principles.

For a while now the polls have been showing that young Americans favor Trump over Biden. I think Trump is just a sort of vanguard. I don't think politics in America is ever going to go back to the way it's been.

Vance is growing on me. He's in favor of monarchy. Can you imagine? Think about how easy it would be to do something substantial about climate change if we had a king. Wall St's power could easily be broken. The US becomes hyper isolationist. Let China and Russia do whatever they want. Project 2025? I'm asking why not? For real.

I suspect they will cheat or assassinate or jail their opponent in Stalinist fashion. — NOS4A2

The world is full of angry, bitter people. Each one thinks his cries mean something. :razz:

Trump isn’t going to win. Biden campaigned from his bunker, drew crowds of max. 50 people at his rallies, was the first virtual candidate, and for some strange reason got the most votes in US history. Never underestimate the corrupt abilities of his party. — NOS4A2

So you predict a Biden win. I'll take it. Trump isolated himself until he was just flailing. Biden at least can gather a group capable of doing the job.

Pelosi told Biden this. He pushed back.

If Harris runs in his place, she'll lose.

Trump's going to win, then Vance. Vance will change the presidential term limits and rule for the rest of his life.