DocWatts

I'll share something I posted elsewhere, because a quick an overview of the Banality of Evil is highly relevant for our current moment: "[They] did not know before 1933 that Nazism was evil. They did not know between 1933 and 1945 that it was evil. And they do not know it now [in 1946].” ― Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45' In Weimer Germany's last free elections, not everyone casting ballots for the Nazis would have described themselves as a Nazi, and a lot of them didn't have any particular animosity towards Jewish people. What was far more common was that folks saw some personal advantage to throwing their lot in with vengeful nationalists, and were willing to downplay and excuse the monstrous things that Hitler and the Nazis were saying and doing at the time - just as people today are willing to downplay Trump's violent hateful rhetoric, his numerous crimes, the January 6th insurrection, and the Republican Party's ongoing coup attempt. Likewise, the vast majority of Trump supporters don't think of themselves as fascist enablers, but what they fail to recognize is that today's fascism couches itself in traditional American values, weaponized against out-groups within American society - just as Nazi fascism marketed itself in traditional German values, weaponized against the out-groups of its day.

Thank you, Leo - been disappointing to see so many low quality takes on what's supposed to be a Conscious Politics Forum, especially considering the gravity of ongoing events.

These are great! As someone writing a book on the topic, I got a chuckle out of the Heidegger one. Of course, I'd say the road is more 'ready-to-beak' for our chicken. 😆 Also, not sure if you managed to compile this from pre-existing knowledge of all of these different ontologies, but if you did colour me impressed.

She's a sitting member of the House of Representatives who has personal experience and expertise with these matters. And she's obviously approaching this issue from a place of good faith, IMHO. I'm going to value her opinion on these matters far more than media personalities who've been reacting to unfolding events with fly-by-the-seat-of-thier-pants sensationalism. If somehow you have more knowledge and firsthand experience on these matters than AOC, I'd love to hear how you managed to do so.

Excellent vid from AOC with a reality check on replacing Biden at the 11th hour.

It's hard to say whether this is the right call or not, since keeping Biden in and replacing him 4 months before the election both carry quite a lot of risk. If they do replace him, the Dems need to unite behind his replacement to have any chance of winning - and they need to do it fast. A drawn or contested primary will almost certainly be handing Trump the presidency. Realistically though, Kamala Harris would pretty much have to be the replacement. Because she was part of the Biden administration, she's the only candidate who has legal access to the millions in campaign funding that the Democratic Party has raised for Biden. If Biden is dropping out, he should resign the presidency as well for health reasons, and spend the next four months uniting the party behind Harris. A strong VP pick like Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, or Bernie Sanders could help, but there's close to zero chance that they'll be at the top of the ticket. On a tangential note - I'm still scratching my head as to how Trump supporters manage to find thier way to a conscious politics forum, and that they expect their posts to be taken seriously...

Well, if I am wrong, then it's business as usual and nothing im actually advocating for is harmful. Which is for more mindful, compassionate, and above all informed participation in the democratic process.Taking a disinterested or detached view of politics when our democracy is rotting from within due to apathy and neglect is none of those things. It's the equivalent of a crowd of people standing by and watching as someone gets assaulted on a crowded street, due to the bystander effect. If anything, I'm challenging people to take on more personal responsibility for the collective problems that we're facing.

Leo, myself, and others who are sounding the alarm bells about Project 2025 and a second Trump presidency are treating current events with a level of seriousness that's completely appropriate, given the situation. America is on the cusp of losing its democracy, with the potential to backslide into the type of authoritarian regime that people have historically immigrated to the United States to escape. Stop treating this as an abstraction. It's happening, it's real, and it will ruin many lives if it comes to fruition.

Add to that that the current Supreme Court is the most corrupt one in United States history, and not just Trump but the entirety of the Republican Party has completely abandoned democratic norms, and further democratic backsliding is a near certainty by this point. The question at this point is how much of our democracy we'll be able to salvage from all this.

For starters, the parallels between Trump's coup attempt on Jan 6 and Hitler's Beerhall Putsch are fairly obvious to anyone who's studied the history of Nazi Germany. https://www.courthousenews.com/how-long-has-this-been-going-on/

The Dictator's Handbook is very highly recommended. Very useful for understanding the real world incentives and pressures that shape the behavior of people in positions of political power. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11612989-the-dictator-s-handbook

I don't have strong opinions one way or the other on Destiny, but hard agree on this point. I read a book earlier this year about preventing 'moderate apocalypses', and the author aptly described what were living through now as a 'stupid, mundane version of a societal collapse'.

Looks like Trump chose a real winner of a VP. Imagine any pre-Trump VP comparing thier running mate to Hitler

My two cents... Political violence, even against an objectively terrible person, will only make an already bad situation worse. But don't let them change the narrative - Project 2025 and Trump's plans to become a vengeful dictator are still the top story here. Let's be real - anyone attending a Trump rally in 2024 is the contemporary American equivalent of a Nazi (note that I wouldn't have made this strong of a claim in 2016 or 2020 - no more plausible deniability anymore about who Trump is and what his intentions are ). Let's not kid ourselves that they'd be denouncing violence if the situation were reversed. From the attack on the Capitol to the thwarted plot to kidnap and execute the governor of my home state of Michigan, MAGA fascists have a proven track record of supporting stochastic terrorism - so long as it's aimed at thier political opponents. So continue to denounce political violence. But let's be clear - Trump isn't a victim, as he's done more than anyone to cultivate the toxic political environment, and normalization of violence, that we've been living through.

The idea that factual truth and malignant disinformation (ie, Trump's Big Lie that he won the 2020 election) deserve equal hearing in the name of 'balance' is destroying American democracy. Responsible non-partisan journalism requires fact checking. Not just dropping misinformation alongside truths with zero context on which is which. Epistemologically, I do find it interesting how the far-right have ironically appropriated the most pernicious aspects of postmodern skepticism towards Truth to push their bullshit.

If the Leopard that wants to eat you is telling you that he's going to eat you, it's not a conspiracy, FFS. Project 2025 was listed on the Heritage Foundation website, and a bunch of Trump's former staffers contributed to it. Trump's only trying to distance himself from it now that it's getting attention in mainstream media, and ordinary people are becoming aware of how extreme it is.

My point was more that Trump wasn't elected because a majority of Americans wanted him in office or agreed with his vision for the country. Rather, he became president in no small part because of structural flaws baked into America's antiquated electoral system. Where a candidate who loses by 3 million votes can win a presidential election. (Note that I'm not saying that Trump 'stole' the 2016 election, just that the rules of the game were weighted in his favor). The reason I'm emphasizing this is because of bad narratives from both the far-Left and the far-Right that the American people supposedly want (or by contrast 'deserve') a vengeful Trump autocracy. When in actually the system is heavily weighted in favor of the %30-40 of the country who find Trump's narcissistic authoritarianism appealing. In this respect there's a parallel to be drawn with misconceptions that a majority of Germans supported Hitler. In the last free Weimar election the Nazis were only got a third of the vote, then proceeded to exploit structural flaws within the Weimer constitution to end German democracy.

Let's just call it for what it is - a judicial coup against constitutional democracy. As LegalEagle pointed out in his vid on the topic, it's like the SCOTUS effectively amended the Constitution to gut the checks and balances against the Executive Branch of the US government. And short of a constitutional convention, we have little to no recourse on this ruling. The decision is a coup against democracy because it gives any future president a rubber stamp to set themselves up as Putin style autocrat - able to break the law to keep themselves in power, with legal impunity. This will go down as the worst decision in the history of the Supreme Court, alongside the Dred Scott ruling which decreed that black Americans were not US citizens and didn't have any rights, leading directly to the US civil war. The salt in the wound is that 5 of the 6 justices responsible for this coup were themselves appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote. My take? Looking like US democracy is probably fucked... Of course we still need to keep Trump out of the White House, but it's hard to see a way where this decision isn't going to be horribly abused by some future president, even if it's not Trump.

According to the skewed rules of the game he won, I wouldn't call it 'fair and square ' since he lost the popular vote by 3 million.

The subset of the US population that feels this way also happens to be the ones who are supporting the Christian Nationalist's efforts to end US democracy. It's marginalized people within the US, along with Leftist and progressives who aren't on board with American imperialism who will end up suffering the most from the collapse of US democracy. Not the willfully ignorant, morally superior subset of the population that you're alluding to. US Hateriots expect Trump to be 'thier' dictator, and they're the worst of the worst as far as being oblivious to the harm that the US causes in other parts of the world. I'd re-examine that punitive attitude if I were you. It's the equivalent of thinking that Germans in 1930s are getting thier 'just desserts' for World War 1, not recognizing the gravity of a vengeful dictator for people outside of Germany.

It almost sounds like you think that American citizens are deserving of collective punishment because of the actions of the US government over the past 100 years. Not a very compassionate take, especially since much of that clandestine foreign policy was done without the American public's informed knowledge or consent. I wonder if you'd apply the same logic to the 1.3 billion people living in China for the actions of the Chinese Communist Party.

Hello again fellow actualizers! I thought I might share another section of the philosophy book I'm writing which delves into the epistemology of categories, using an analogue of the 'map is not the territory' metaphor. In it I suggest that reason is inherently embodied, and not a purely intellectual activity - meaning that our reasoning abilities are derived from our concernful involvement with the world. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ CATEGORIES ARE ALWAYS CONTEXTUAL Orienting Metaphor : Categories are like handheld models that help us grasp aspects of Reality that are relevant to us. Just as we wouldn’t confuse a model airplane with an actual aircraft, we shouldn’t confuse our constructed categories for Reality itself. The Model Is Not The Manifestation Throughout our exploratory journey we’ve been assembling a tentative framework for understanding knowledge, grounded in the importance of the living body to what minds are and how thought works. Rather than getting bogged down in a thicket of abstract theorizing that’s disconnected from everyday experience, our aim has been to elucidate our concernful involvement with the day-to-day world. From this foundation, we proceeded to highlight the centrality of nonconceptual knowledge for navigating daily life. We suggested that concepts depend upon a background of familiarity with the world that’s nonconceptual, attained through everyday practices and activities. Lastly, we analyzed how this grounding within Reality, termed Being-In-The-World, is foundational for conceptual thinking - including scientific understanding, logical reasoning, and beliefs. Taken together, the epistemology, or theory of knowledge, we’ve been constructing is called ‘Enactivism’ - named for its overarching premise that minds actively bring forth, or ‘enact’, a lived Reality. A key facet of this framework is that the world itself is central to who and what we are, inseparable from our ‘being’, and no definitive boundary that delineates where ‘I’ end and ‘the world’ begins. This lack of an absolute boundary between ‘self’ and ‘world’ may sound like a highly abstract or even spiritual point. However, it has direct applicability for the epistemological ground we’ll be covering in this chapter. The next stop on our exploratory journey brings us to categories, and their influence on our perceptions of the everyday world - how they illuminate, and how they obscure. To that end, we’ll examine everyday dualisms (paired, oppositional categories) such as ‘self and other’ or ‘inside and outside’. We’ll also cover abstract concepts such as ‘space’ and ‘time’, which are fundamental to how we reason about Reality. With this requisite groundwork now in place, we turn to our third ‘Provisional Truth’, which is that categories are always contextual. The orienting metaphor that will clue us into its meaning is a handheld model, like a model airplane. The gist of the metaphor is that categories are like handheld models, helping us grasp aspects of Reality that are relevant for us. Just as we wouldn’t confuse a model airplane on our desk for an actual aircraft, we shouldn’t conflate our constructed categories for Reality itself. The key takeaway here is that the model is not the manifestation - meaning that models are not a replacement for what they represent. A model vehicle can’t be used as transportation, nor is plastic fruit edible. Moreover, models are not replications of their real-world counterparts - even a highly detailed model can’t hope to replicate the millions of mechanical parts within a Boeing 747. So if a model airplane isn’t a replacement for, or a replication of, an actual aircraft, then what is it? In essence, it’s a collection of curated surface details - such as rigid wings, a cockpit, and an engine - which combine to form a unified impression of a more complex whole. This intuitive connection between a model plane and an actual aircraft is arrived at through imaginative projection that’s derived from our embodied experiences within a world that contains airplanes. So that’s the ‘model’ side of our orienting metaphor. Now that we have a more precise understanding of what a model is, let’s extrapolate the metaphor to our exploration of categories. The basic parallel is that just as a model plane is not an actual aircraft, our constructed categories are not objective features of Reality. Both model airplanes and mental categories create an intuitive impression of a more complex whole, by emphasizing certain of its selective features. Crucially, these selective features aren’t arbitrary - they stand out to us because they are relevant to us for some reason. This relevancy is derived from our concernful involvement with the world, which arises from everyday practices and activities that we engage with through our living body and our culture. Consequently, categories aren’t a straightforward ‘retrieval’ of pre-existing distinctions that are ‘out there’ in the world. They are instead an anthropomorphized schema that we impose upon Reality, which helps us make sense of our embodied experience. Recall that a schema is a template for organizing and interpreting information within a given domain. Describing this schema as anthropomorphized indicates that it’s tied to human capacities, needs, and purposes. In sum, categories are functional rather than objective - meaning that they’re useful to us, even though they’re not objective features of Reality. The basic purpose of a category is to help us make predictive generalizations about what we encounter within the world, which is integral to our ability to reason. Reason is our capacity to manipulate and extend these ‘predictive generalizations’, using them to draw inferences, predict patterns, and reflect upon our embodied experience. The gist of our ‘Provisional Truth’ is that categories aren’t absolute - they are always tied to a biological, cultural, and personal context. What a context refers to are the background situation and circumstances that inform our interpretation of something. For example, consider how spoken language is informed by tone and body language, and how a conversation’s meaning depends upon its circumstances and our relationship with the speaker. While it’s easy to grasp how the meaning we derive from spoken language depends upon a host of contextual factors, this is also true of the categories that we use to make sense of the world. Recognizing that categories are inherently contextual has huge ramifications for how we think about knowledge, but this comes with the potential for misunderstandings as well - so let’s address those right out of the gate. Acknowledging the contextual nature of categories is not to suggest that categories are arbitrary - as we’ll see, there are sensible reasons for why our categorization shifts in different types of contexts. Likewise, the suggestion that categories aren’t objective features of Reality isn’t to imply that categories are purely subjective either (i.e., purely a matter of an individual’s whims and preferences). In fact, the distinction between subjective and objective is a type of everyday dualism that we’ll be scrutinizing in this chapter. Instead, the overall goal is to articulate a more nuanced understanding of categories which seeks to acknowledge their many benefits as well as their limitations.

Agreed. The Trump Immunity decision needs to be framed in discussions and the media as a Judicial Coup against constitutional democracy, because that's exactly what it is.

The most awful part is that regardless of if Trump wins the election, the Supreme Court has initiated a judicial coup which gives any future president all of the tools they need to become an autocrat. LegalEagle describes it as if the Supreme Court just effectively amended the Constitution to end checks and balances (which the Founding Fathers very much intended) for the Executive Branch. The president now has broad legal immunity to take bribes, make efforts to overturn election, attempt a military coup, or assassinate political opponents. The salt in the wound is that 5 of the 6 justices who gave the president the powers of a King were themselves appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote. So in short, American democracy looks to be fucked. Hybrid regime here we come.