I like to compare Trump to Mick Jagger. Jagger is only barely a musician, but he has charisma out the ass. He can't play lead guitar worth a shit, but he can play an audience like the true world class pro that he is.

If we were to ask Jagger a detailed question about music theory, he'd likely look stupid. He's certainly not a jazz musician. But if we were to ask him to channel the egos of a 100,000 human beings in a stadium, he's fucking brilliant.

If we look at Jagger strutting around on stage making all the usual rock star pouty faces, he actually looks kinda stupid. But his business is not music theory, it's human ego. And ego is the little four year old child still residing within all of us. Ego is pretty stupid, so if you want to talk to ego, or many millions of egos, it's smart to talk the language that ego understands.

Thus, Jagger can look stupid, and actually be stupid in some regards, while also being brilliant.

We all agree that Trump is not an articulate intellectual, like Obama for example. And we probably all prefer articulate intellectuals because, after all, this is a philosophy forum. So far so good.

What members are doing is leaping from the agreed upon fact that Trump is not an articulate intellectual, the kind of person we prefer, to the conclusion that he is therefore stupid.

And one of the key reasons that Trump got elected is that we've been making this same self serving error in regards to truck drivers, waitresses, car mechanics, farmers, factory workers and so on. For decades (since at least the sixties) we've been looking down our snooty noses at such folks based on the ignorant assumption that articulate presentation is the only valid measure of intelligence.

And guess what? A lot of these folks are getting kinda sick of that. And then some hyper confident strong man comes along, raises his middle finger and jams it in our eyes, channeling the pent up frustrations of those we've been insulting for years. He bellows that we liberals are arrogant assholes, and it works, because there's some truth in that claim.

There's plenty of stupid to go around. Lots of these folks used to be Democratic voters. It's we who lost them.

As I said, you keep pushing the incredible lie that Trump is a street-smart operator. — Kenosha Kid

If we wish to abandon all evidence from the real world, then I agree I'm totally wrong.

Some of us are smart and Trump is stupid. — Michael

Those of us who think Trump is stupid are not smart, at least not on this particular topic. They may be very smart on other topics. What's really happening in this thread is herd mentality, a tribal dance where like minded people gather to tell each other how right they are, over and over and over again. In other words, this is the Internet. :-) But not really philosophy.

If you want to prove your point, why don't you demonstrate what "smart things" Trump has done that has led to his election victory? — Benkei

I don't wish to prove anything to you. You win.

If you'd like to disclose how old you are I would be willing to have more patience with someone who may be 40 years my junior.

You keep pushing the incredible lie that Trump is some street-smart operator. — Kenosha Kid

Generally speaking this whole thread is confusing two different things.

Is Trump evil? Yes.

Does that automatically mean he's stupid? No.

This is a philosophy forum. Not Twitter. Not Facebook. Not the pub downtown. A philosophy forum.

And thus it would seem appropriate that we make at least some good faith effort to observe the Trump phenomena with some detachment.

Do we all hate Trump? YES! So let's go ahead and say that another 3,000 times, get it out of our system, and then erase the thread and start a new one.

All these processes are never the product of the actions of one man. They require socio-economic circumstances to be a certain way, populism thrives in downturns. — Benkei

Blah, blah, blah, college sophomore punditry. And if you really are a college sophomore, then ok, pretty good. Keep going.

Right. He is the cause, which is strong grounds to apply the 25th amendment. But lying about voter fraud, even if the cause of the coup, is not an outright incitement to insurrection. — Kenosha Kid

I agree that he has skillfully walked the line between legal and illegal.

Yeah, I know you like this line, you use it a lot, but Trump couldn't outsmart a banana — Kenosha Kid

Apologies, meaning no offense, but the majority of this thread is really little more than the usual fantasy superiority ego posturing so common on forums. Perhaps we could cut the crap and just get down to what we really want to do.

We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.

So to sum up: Trump is emotionally intelligent (in a very limited and specific way) and stupid in almost every other way possible. — Benkei

And yet he has taken over half of the world's leading superpower and earned the attention of almost the entire planet, while you honk your little posts to almost nobody on a tiny forum.

Are you perhaps familiar with the concept of evidence?

I'm getting tired of people pretending Trump is in any way smart in the conventional sense or that "philosopers" are socially inept and incapable of understanding "street smarts". He's connected, famous and he has money. — Benkei

If you are in your twenties then your comment is understandable.

On a general note, you can see from the actions of the Trump supporters that his only legitimate support base comes from grievance. In other words, all of those who support him have axes to grind, grudges to bear and a sense of injustice and unfairness. — Wayfarer

Well, this is a bit sweeping, isn't it? There are many millions of Trump voters, and only the tiniest fraction of them have taken part in any public demonstrations etc. I see something like this...

Corporate media focuses on drama to build audience, and thus ad revenues. And so those who invade Congress get endless hours of coverage, while the peaceful, reasonable, sane Trump voters get close to nothing. This isn't a political bias so much as it is a business bias, a bias for profits.

An important part of Trump's evil genius is that he's a realist. And so he understands far better than most that corporate media is not in the news business, but in the advertising business. He understands their business model, works it like a pro, and is rewarded with non-stop round the clock coverage of his every utterance.

Corporate media's business model is built upon our bottomless need for stimulation. It's a survival of the fittest situation. If one channel refuses to feed the beast of our endless need, they go out of business and are replaced by a company who will give us what we want.

If we can stop yelling about Trump long enough to follow the breadcrumbs back to their source, we will find they lead directly to us.

I think he's a turd who loved every second of the chaos he invited. But I don't think there's a solid line from what he explicitly said to what happened. In politics, "fight" does not mean "fisticuffs". — Kenosha Kid

Well, what he explicitly said for at least months was a consistent pattern of blatant lies which became the foundation of the invasion of Congress. Without the lies, no invasion.

What Trump's speech can highlight is what a savvy street smarts actor Trump is. He's been walking the line between legal and illegal for years, and is very good at it. Think of all the crap he's been hip deep in for decades, and yet never served a day in jail.

What confuses we philosophers is that Trump is not an intellectual, like say, Obama. He's not articulate in the manner that we relate to. So he sounds oafish to us, and we assume that means he's stupid. But he's not stupid, he's just not smart in the way that we can appreciate. He's street smart, typically a foreign land for philosophers.

There's an excellent chance that Trump will have launched a violent invasion of the Congress of the United States, and pay no price for it. Evil. But not stupid.

Hitler is a decent example. He was considered an ignorant buffoon too. Until he came within an inch of conquering all of Europe.

In moderation. Would be the boring straightforward answer. — khaled

Oops, someone beat me to it...

So can you explain how people who are hanging out together talking about philosophy can relate their experiences to each other directly without recourse to "2nd hand experience"? — Garth

Now you're referring to communication. Again, I was referencing experience.

Experiences do get translated in to abstractions for purposes of communication obviously. But what is then being transferred from one person to another is the abstraction, not the experience.

It's like the screen name Garth. That's a symbol which points to a real person. The symbol is useful, but it's not you.

You’re dealing with dead wood here. Very odd the lack of interest. Almost denial. — Brett

It's very normal though. I've had this conversation a number of times in a number of places and it always goes exactly the same way.

So for this piece of dead wood it's become an exercise in how to enthusiastically embrace a topic of interest while at the same time letting it go. It's kind of like one of those Buddhist stories where the master tells you to create an elaborate pattern out of colored rocks. After two weeks you're finally done and then the master comes along and quickly kicks it all away with his foot, and tells you to do it again. You're supposed to learn how to enthusiastically embrace the moment, without getting attached to the outcome.

A work in progress here...

Is philosophy good for us? — Brett

That's a good question. My answer would be, in moderation. A good analogy might be our relationship with food. Some is clearly necessary, but more is not automatically better, and can in fact be fatal.

You mentioned some famous philosophers and their personal problems etc. Their deep immersion in thought and their personal issues are related, a product of the same process.

↪Hippyhead So... are we doing the call-and-answer thing? — Banno

This could be clever and funny, if it was posted on Facebook.

there are also patterns of interlinked threads on more interesting and intricate philosophical issues, which would be lost were these suggestions taken on board. — Banno

Again, you're commenting on the suggestions without bothering to understand them, or perhaps even read them. The exact opposite of what you just said is true. If a thread was full of interesting philosophical issues it could be located above the fold in the Articles section, where it would not be buried amongst a pile of junk. Thus, it would be more visible, not less.

The whole point of such organization is to make the forum more appealing to new visitors who are capable of adding value to the forum. Those who can't or won't add value, and everyone else as well, could still do pretty much whatever they want in the Conversation area which would be available to all registered members.

The way to debunk me is to ask why I am bothering to explain all this, yet again. I have no good answer to that, I must admit.

By demanding and pursuing some perfect and excellent way of understanding the world we are shifting our focus away from reality itself to our thoughts about reality. That is, we are choosing a diluted 2nd hand experience of reality over the real thing. — Hippyhead

Our understanding of the world is only thoughts — Garth

Yes. But please note the comment of mine you are quoting refers to experience, not understanding. Understanding is an experience of our thoughts about reality. Not an experience of reality itself. Thus, understanding is 2nd hand experience.

This forum is run by and for curmudgeons. — Banno

And I too am being a curmudgeon by challenging the prominent placement of the kinds of lazy little posts which you like to clog threads with. There's a valid place for what you wish to do. It's called Facebook.

Actually, on this occasion I agree with you completely. It will just become another thread dominated mostly by people attacking one other — Jack Cummins

Yes, that's the usual pattern on this subject, and very many others. Given the popularity of that hobby there can be a place for it. My argument is that the appropriate location for such ego conflicts, which really have nothing to do with philosophy, is a section at the bottom of the forum which is viewable only by registered members. The very same high school antics can still exist. They just wouldn't get above the fold front page billing, that's all.

Cutting to the chase, if you do not like this forum, set up one you do like. — Banno

If you don't like this thread, find another one to read.

You would remodel the whole forum because youa re unhappy with one small section of it. — Banno

As seems normal, you apparently haven't bothered to read my suggestions, and thus appear not to understand them. But you still want to have a fixed opinion on the matter. You have nothing constructive to offer, just the usual lazy gotcha dance little bit of nothing.

Given the number of posts across the forum of this nature, there's the evidence of the brokenness which these proposals attempt to address.

assuming the Democrats don't completely blow it these next few years. But as soon as I wrote that last part, I'm beginning to think he may have a shot after all. — Xtrix

Yea, more wisdom from you. I think we under estimate Trump at our peril. Is he evil? Indisputably true. But is he also very street smart? True again.

If we can't bar him from running again then maybe other options will be required. And that's all you're gonna hear from here about that. :-)

These stories you tell are pretty defeatist, though, don't you think? — Xtrix

Ok, fair enough. To a significant degree I've lost faith in humanity. I'm pretty cheerful about that most of the time, but when pressed to explain I have to air the dirt that caused me to lose faith. I don't hate anybody or anything like that, but am I still willing to invest tons of time in trying to save people from themselves? No, been there, done that. Your turn now.

t's very selective, skewed towards negative experiences. — Xtrix

I did have some great experiences which I don't regret. It's like what some veterans say about being in the service. Great experience, don't wanna do it again. :-)

This thread is a good example, yes. OK, so people aren't focused enough on nuclear weapons. Then it's your job to educate them. Who says you can't? — Xtrix

I say I can't. See this thread, total waste of time.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/9333/insanity-squared

Sorry, really truly not trying to be a dickhead, but honestly speaking...

Members here, and professional philosophers too, simply too dense to get nuclear weapons. And for quite awhile I was too dense to get that they are too dense to get it.

Now I get that the subject is simply too big for them, for me, for us, for reason. I'm not as negative as these posts suggest, but more philosophical, seeing the reality more clearly, making peace with it. Very interesting subject, but now I am ridiculously off topic so.... :-)

Too bad it's not a secret ballot. Then I have no doubt they'd have the votes -- most Republicans can't stand him. They're just too cowardly to say it publicly. — Xtrix

Yea, ok, I can hear that. Cowardly does seem accurate. So is there any point to another impeachment then in your opinion?

But there are endless possibilities for activism. — Xtrix

In an earlier era I was a full time public safety activist here in Florida. Long story, but again, same story.

People would show up at meetings to demand somebody do something, but the somebody was almost never them. The state wide group I was working for failed to show up at the state supreme court to defend the constitutional amendment I had spent 5 billion hours promoting. Otherwise intelligent professional people would stand up at public meetings, and want to tell a 3 hour story, about themselves. One of the meetings I hosted got on national TV. A local Sheriff took the stage and gave an impassioned speech. When I tried to thank him in the parking lot after the meeting to work together, he looked me right in the eye and told me to get fucking lost.

Again, we need travel no further than this website. Everyone is trying to position themselves as a big logic brain Mr. Rational etc, while we relentlessly ignore the single biggest threat to modern civilization. It's just bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, never ending total pure bullshit.

I guess I'm just getting old my friend. The torrential bullshit storm has worn me out.

If you can still hack it, go for it!

When there are important votes, almost every senator shows up. — Xtrix

But they don't have to show up. The Republican senators could liberate themselves from Trump just by not showing up to vote. Seventeen senators not showing up would get the job done, right?

With Trump gone doesn't that clear the field for any senator with presidential ambitions?

I do admire the quit you have in you. — Hanover

I admire how insanely clever your lazy little remarks can be.

The common denominator in all those interactions is you. — Benkei

Ok, so you're saying that few to none of the nuclear weapons sites link to each other because I'm somehow creating an obstacle?

You're saying that the supposedly oh so clever little wanna be philosopher people on this site, and the pro philosophers too, overwhelmingly ignore nuclear weapons because of me? I'm the obstacle?

As usual Benkei, you're clogging the thread with your little ego. Now you will make some supposedly clever little remark in a desperate attempt to save face. So very tiresome.

If they convict him in the senate, he's barred from holding public office again. — Xtrix

Are you sure that's all that's required? I'm hearing jabber about there needing to be another vote specifically about banning him from running.

But that's unlikely to happen, given that 67 senators are needed to do so.

I'm hearing that what's needed is two thirds of the Senators who show up to vote. If that's true, that's a very different situation, yes?

But if ever there were a time where we need all rational hands on deck, it's right now. — Xtrix

Ok, I can hear that. Really, I can. So here's a little story.

About a year ago I made a somewhat serious effort to engage by becoming a nuclear weapons activist. I made a 200 page website and so on.

I made a good faith effort to engage on Twitter with other nuclear weapons type folks, who are on average very sincere and well educated etc. I followed every one I could find, and engaged with anyone who showed interest. It proved to be a total waste of time. People on Twitter, even the very intelligent ones, just shout little blurbs at each other. Very little real engagement, NOTHING at all like what is accomplished here.

So I wrote article about forums and tried to interest the nuclear weapons community in that. I volunteered to do what whatever was needed to go in that direction. A no go operation. Just not interested. At all. The vast majority of emails I sent to any nuclear weapons site received no response. I tried donating money. Didn't help.

My website was the only nuclear weapons site I could find that tried to link to all the other nuclear weapons site. All the other sites focused on their own projects while largely ignoring everyone else.

But all of that turned out to not really be the real obstacle. I retired from activism when it became clear to me that nothing substantial is going to happen with nuclear weapons until after the next detonation. I'm hoping to be dead before that happens, so....

Sorry to honk this hysterical horn yet again, but...

Look at the world of philosophy, which is supposedly about rational thought. Very close to exactly no interest in nuclear weapons, no matter the level of education.

All of this is just to explain why retarded squirrels are looking pretty good here. That's not sarcasm, I'm being serious. My little friend Marco the retarded squirrel is pure, innocent, uncontaminated by this world, closer to the Great Whatever than I can ever be. BTW, my degree is in special education, so retarded anybody has always had a place in my heart.

Anyway, there you go, way more than you wanted to know about that! :-)

We know, for instance, that what drives reactionary populism is the declining Economic conditions of poor and middle class whites. — Garth

It's my probably too often stated opinion that the underlying source of all this social conflict is the knowledge explosion, especially it's accelerating nature. The pace of technological change floods the environment with uncertainty and potential threat.

I may have missed this. What exactly would have to happen for Trump to be legally barred from running again? I'm getting the impression from NPR coverage that no one really knows for sure. Is that right, or am I missing pieces of the puzzle?

Also, is Biden trying to put the brakes on the impeachment push? Is it his judgment that preventing Trump from running again isn't going to work, thus impeachment will just generate a lot of unproductive noise?

I don't see a way out of this other than making attempts to educate them, and that can't be done if we hold them in contempt. — Xtrix

Agreed. And if I could add, not just educate them, but be educated by them where possible. That's surely implied in the concept of not holding them in contempt.

This is not meant to be insulting, because I've felt (and continue to feel) this way as well, but I think it's worth attempting to grow out of this kind of view. I think this attitude is a remnant of adolescent contempt. — Xtrix

My reply is not meant to be insulting either, we're just chatting, no worries. My attitude arises out of about a billion hours spent in the north Florida woods, which I have discovered to be more interesting than human beings, on average, generally speaking.

I can plug in to this site because it at least attempts to be about interesting ideas. But massive piles of little bits of nothing just doesn't do it for me.

I think perhaps you're both showing your age. — fdrake

This is true enough. One of the things that happens with age is that you've heard all the ego driven melodrama merry-go-round noise so many times that it becomes of ever less interest. It's like a TV show that you liked the first couple of times you watched it, but after about the 14th viewing you started yelling, "Ok, ok, alright, alright, enough already!"

The intuition: what kind of weirdo exempts themselves from society like this? — fdrake

I hear your points, really I do. But I would answer your question this way.

The kind of weirdo that exempts themselves from social media could be the kind of weirdo who understands that, due to severe limitations of the human condition, social media sites are OVERWHELMINGLY jammed to overflowing with time wasting worthless crap. Never has the phrase "much ado about nothing" been so useful.

I hear your points because I do understand that being a hermit is not going to work for very many of us.

But honest to God, true story, there is a retarded squirrel living in cage at the top of the stairs here who is far more interesting, to me, than most human beings.

It is quite creepy that someone can be exiled from that commons with little to no oversight. — fdrake

I must admit I'm having trouble figuring out why I should be concerned about being banned from Twitter, Facebook and the vast majority of social media sites. If I had to make a yes/no decision right on the spot I'd probably thank them for kicking me out. Being banned from Twitter is like being banned from a landfill.

I've been through a lot since then, but long story short, to me, everything, especially that in relation to human society, seems absolutely absurd. — Ellis

I haven't used the word absurd so much, but I get the general sentiment. I spend a LOT of time in the woods. When I'm spending the entire dawn to dusk day out there by myself, interest in human melodrama does recede substantially. Hmm...

Remember when you were in the fourth grade and it mattered so much that one of the guys or girls didn't like you. But now all that melodrama seems far distant and only of vague historical interest? Kinda like that. You know the melodrama is real, you know it's there, you know it matters, but um, you're just kind of floating away from it all.

Here's a solution of sorts to the absurdity experience. Shift our focus away from the tiny human world to the infinitely larger and truly far more amazing real world beyond.

What do you think? — Ellis

That I probably think about all this crap rather too much.