The Trump Presidency

[Dr_Toad]

Bullshit.
It's a Trump policy - straight from the executive branch of the US government.
And Trump is a US Republican voter's decision, one they still support.
So this is on them. This is US Republican voter responsibility, behavior, and character. They chose this, with their eyes wide open and plenty of warning.

Double bullshit. This decision to separate parents from children was adjudicated in 1997 by the 9th circuit court.

“The Democrats forced that law upon our nation,” Trump asserted last week.

Democrats, backed by some media commentators, counter that it’s not the law but a Trump administration policy.

Actually, experts say, the situation is a combination of a bipartisan law and a Clinton administration policy.

In 1997, the Clinton administration entered into something called the Flores Settlement Agreement, which ended a class action lawsuit first brought in the 1980s.

The settlement established a policy that the federal government would release unaccompanied minors from custody to their parents, relatives, or other caretakers after no more than 20 days, or, alternatively, determine the “least restrictive” setting for the child.

In a separate development, in 2008 the Democrat-controlled Congress approved bipartisan legislation to combat human trafficking and President George W. Bush, a Republican, signed it into law.

Section 235 (g) in that law, the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, states that unaccompanied minors entering the United States must be transferred to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement rather than to the Department of Homeland Security.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit expanded the Flores settlement in 2016 to include children brought to the country illegally by their parents.

For consistency between the provision of the anti-trafficking law and the 9th Circuit’s interpretation of the Flores agreement, children who came into the country illegally with parents had to be taken into HHS custody, said Art Arthur, former general counsel for Immigration and Naturalization Services (now known as Immigration and Customs Enforcement) as well as a former federal immigration judge.

“As soon as their parents are detained, the children are classified as unaccompanied,” Arthur, now a resident fellow for law and policy at the Center

 

[Tiassa]

... "i might not want be able to save you even if i could, but i will protect your right to die without anyone helping you"

The truly American version would be uploading the video to an overseas server.

On this occasion, it's one of those whiffs of a rumor of a third alternative, of sorts, but only kind of. An anchor point might be that for as much as Iceaura and I fight within our context, but we happen to emerge from very similar, and largely common literary-historical heritage; our American notion of social contract is woven into history and politics. We still have differences about it, but most of what keeps us fighting is other stuff, entirely; that's how fundamental social contract is to American political thought.

And while we might disagree about all that, some might disagree in another way. There are various arguments against the social contract, but few adherents who so identify; I actually owe someone else similar consideration in re rule of law↗, and there is some overlap, there. That is, rule of law is like a syllogism; its consistency is unto itself. A tyrant, for instance, can respect rule of law, at least according to abstract theory, but even still it is a sketchy social contract should we even call it that; generally speaking, people think of such arrangements as rackets. Still, though, I think of a cutscene from a video game as emblematic, because the cynical retort was not entirely removed from our neighbor's disdain. That is, as our hero extolled the virtues of democracy, Isaac the bartender replied that wealth and ownership of property of ownership were the only real freedom; the point was punctuated by the fact of the setting in a Hong Kong nightclub where, despite tyranny and apocalypse, people still had it in them to party. It's an interactive cutscene; those not interested in extolling democracy can choose a different route. Nonetheless, that counterpoint functionally rings much like our neighbor's argument, to "care about the freedoms important to you".

Yet our neighbor has chosen what seems another course, which is the general↑ delegitimization↑ of the social contract↑, and the application is to (A) promote his argument by disqualifying the counterpoint, and (B) change the subject so as not to come back to the faulty↑ equivocation↑ he would rather not defend.

Watch the birdie, so to speak. He can wreck his hope on the rocks all he wants, but there is no reason anyone else needs to follow him in.

... is this institutionalised cultural narcissism ? qwasi posturual anthropomorphism ? ... emotion running away from the coal face of factualism ? modulated self preservation of quasi-creativity seeking self actualisation in a neutral social simbiosis ?

The first two work. There is a symbiotic aspect. It's all a tangled mess.

Supremacism, dualism, neurosis.

Anthropologically, there is an instinctive sensation or notion of tacit supremacism that seems to accompany familiarity. In the fiction of Steven Brust, an elven species insists on calling itself "human", and why not, since most days they can thrash humans. But this is not conjured from thin air; he refers, obliquely, to a feature of language in which the xenophobia of self and other, us and them, is simply a dimension of the experience, such as the word barbarian, which in turn derives from a word about creatures that sound funny; there is me, we, us, and then there are barbaros (βάρβαρος). By the time the Romans used the word, it was unmistakably pejorative.

Here we are, millennia later, and it seems almost unimaginable.

(¡cough!)​

There is also a basic dualism in such formulation, and, this is as strange or not as supremacism concomitant to familiarity.

The American neurosis is actually a massive, deep, impossibly complicated mess, but the part we see really is as superficial and desperate as it so often seems. This superficiality important to symbiotic considerations; sometimes being seen is as vital an endeavor as anything else. Consider mgtow, which isn't entirely a digression; the more accurate but less catchy term would be mbsgtow, because the object is to be men being seen going their own way, i.e., if they were really going their own way, then they wouldn't beg for women's attention in order to insult them on the way out the door.

And in such dimensions, neurotic tension can easily run rather quite shallow; it's hard to explain a particular press briefing that happened this week, but DHS Secretary Nielsen put on a show, Sunday and Monday, very nearly beyond belief. Quite clearly the most apparent stressor of being seen as the one in charge of an American atrocity against children is having some effect.

But there is a deeper aspect, and this goes back to questions of social contract, rule of law, and other such mysteries and philosophical aspects of civilized society. Consider, for a moment, that equality, between people and before the law, is an inevitable necessity of civilized society. Juxtapose that with a consideration of social contract:

The ultimate goal, then, of social contract theories is to show, in the most general sense, that social (moral, political, legal, etc.) rules can be rationally justified. This does not, however, distinguish the social contract from other approaches in moral and political philosophy, all of which attempt to show that moral and political rules are rationally justifiable in some sense. The true distinctiveness of the social contract approach is that justification does not rely on some exogenous reason or truth.

(D'Agostino, Gaus, and Thrasher↱)​

The problem with exogenous reason or truth, as such, is that it is, in the context of what social contract seeks to resolve, arbitrary. We might consider, then, neurosis near to the heart of conscience; it is not simply that others in society superficially disapprove of one's behavior, but, rather, that the arbitrary justification of authority can be arbitrarily usurped. Superficial disapproval can be buried under ego defense, to be certain, but its real problem is that it reminds a conscience of vulnerability not understood. Nobody likes being reminded they are afraid.

And this fear, more than your or my disapproval, informing they are wrong. This is the dualism: Us, them. Right, wrong. Good, evil. Thus, there is prejudice (us), recognition (not right), and assessment (therefore not good). While, yes, it is bad to be called a racist because it is bad to be a racist, most are arriving at that moment of protest through pathways that would seem rather quite strange to others under the circumstances.

Furthermore, part of what we need to bear in mind is that this all happens recursively on the fly; "modulated self preservation of quasi-creativity seeking self actualisation" is an overcomplicated statement that is not without merit. Each of the components is well enough, but imagine collective individual neurotic stress expressed in communal cult shaping code leading to catechismal creed with every factor simultaneously, independently and interdependently, dynamically, recursively, and perpetually transforming both phase and valence, and rarely or never resolved so accurately or stably to be identified according to itself such that it can only be identified according to the composite it lends to. Or maybe I should have gone with modulated might be too precise, but self-preservation, quasi-creativity, and self-actualization are all in play, and when pressed even the religious will admit God doesn't know what it all adds up to in any given moment.

And it seems worth noting, therein we also find elements of psychosocial symbiosis.

The bigots, as such, only know they are accused; should they perceive no exposure, they would react differently. The exposure they fear isn't bigotry itself, but being wrong, and therefore evil, and therefore weak. As noted, our neighbor presents an argument that is fundamentally about empowerment. Evil is to the beholder. Wrong, as a functional matter, means weakness, and that is dangerous.

oh-so american culture ! this is the very heart of the american [facist?]capitslist personality(i must always be bigger than you).

It's also part of our Christian heritage. To wit, Max Weber. There is a reason the book is called, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism↱.

Those who burned witches behaved as if they were somehow above accusation, which is important since part of the justification is in Matthew 25, to do or not unto the least of His brethren. It's easy to hope they would do the same for you if you convince yourself they never would. History also reminds that Torquemada was Jewish.
____________________

Notes:

D'Agostino, Fred, Gerald Gaus, and John Thrasher. "Contemporary Approaches to the Social Contract". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 31 May 2017. Plato.Stanford.edu. 19 June 2018. https://stanford.io/2lmd2ZI

 

[Quantum Quack]

Do not be surprised if the worlds consumers decide to sanction the USA by boycotting "USA made" products. Canadian consumers are already actively moving towards sanctioning the USA.
src: https://globalnews.ca/news/4282602/boycott-u-s-products-buy-canadian-products-trade-war/

Typically a trade war is between Governments, often failing to realize that the consumer has the ultimate say.
Globalization... eh Mr Trump that big 13 letter G word... again.... Globalization means many things, one of which empowers the consumers globally to launch their own individual yet co-ordinated via social media sanctions against a nation. Certainly Hispanic communities or any one who has had enough of Trumps bullying will think twice about supporting USA products like coffee, liquor, cars, technology etc.. ( Tourism hit est. $4.6 billion since Trump took office)
If the USA thought it had a trade deficit problem it might have to consider a trade deficit disaster instead.

 

[Schmelzer]

And you - by settling there, choosing to live in that community - agreed to that.

No. Accepting some evil as practically unavoidable in the actual world does not mean to agree with it.

And children, families, jobs, economies, natural resources, industrial organizations, etc, do not exist.

Nonsense.

Tell that to the time clock. The drug test. The security guards. The background checks.

?????????????

Keep repeating that, and all of anthropology and game theory and democratic governance will go away.
Because the extant social contract can be destroyed, reneged on, revoked, by the powerful. They can become "above the law", which often includes "above the custom, the society, the social contract". That's not good, from a libertarian's point of view.

Nonsense. Of course, there are societies based on laws which would be more or less acceptable as a sort of "social contract" to a majority of the people. Of course, if they are more far away from a reasonable, acceptable proposal, this would be bad. But this does not change the point that this "social contract" is not a contract, because they do not even ask me to sign it.

Fantasy.

Of course, any proposal for something better than the actually existing order is fantasy, necessarily. Different utopian proposals differ from each other in many important things, most of all in the question if a realization would be possible at all, if the utopian society would be really one where one would like to live, and how much details are given to evaluate this, and if there are imaginable ways to create such a society. If you don't want to discuss it, your choice.

You've gone from found a solution↑ to what that solution will be↑ if it is ever found, for instance, and isn't that just super?

Makes no sense. The solution found in the actual agreement was how to circumvent the nuclear issue so that it no longer prevents signing a peace contract. A peace contract would be the solution for many problems in Korea. I support both claims all the time, no "gone from to". The discussion about social contract is about something completely different.

I was unable to make sense of most of your text. One can identify some typical for the non-existing general culture of discussion elements:

... I simply don't believe you're that stupid, ... you abide this dysfunctional, detached, thoughtless, self-centered gaslight definition of ... your lazy equivocation↑ ... Your cynicism ... it seems to coincide with bigotry, but its weird dimensions are symptomatic of your application. ... the underlying antisocial attitudes saturate your presentation

This looks like a general tendency in many discussions - the focus on personal accusations, instead of trying to discuss some content in a neutral language.

Last but not least, we started here with discussing a rather abstract concept of justification of some particular system as a "social contract", which I criticize because it is misleading, given that it uses the word "contract" even if a key element - volitional agreement with the contract by all participants - does not exist. Such theoretical question could be discussed without any personal attacks.

Your underlying argument is about empowerment, and this is one of those questions when antisociability becomes really, really important, because your underlying argument is also really, really selfish. It's the same thing we hear from Americans who focus on particular "economic justice" arguments seemingly custom-tailored to preclude real justice; for these it is not enough to claim their fair share from the bourgeoisie, but require also its authority to decide for others what constitutes a fair share. If it is, for instance, simply a matter of eating, then it is not enough for some to have a full belly, as they also require others must go hungry. Or, as you put it, to care about the freedoms important to you.

I don't understand this. I argue for the freedom of all people (not only me) to care about the freedoms important to them, and to find a community which provides this freedom. This in no way aims to decide for others what is important for them. The monk will be free to submit to an extremely rigorous social contract of a monastery, and this may include also rules for Lent which may oblige him to go hungry sometimes. But this would be his personal decision, and would not be my requirement. People are different, and the idea of a worldwide unique universal set of laws obligatory for everybody is a quite horrible one. A sexual (or whatever) addict may prefer a society which helps him to fight his addiction by not tolerating his addictive behavior, a gay will prefer a society which tolerates his sexual choices. And a communist would be also free to find a community without private property and equality between all members of the community, in full agreement with his personal ideas about justice and equality and his prejudices against any form of selfishness.

 

[RainbowSingularity]

The truly American version would be uploading the video to an overseas server.

On this occasion, it's one of those whiffs of a rumor of a third alternative, of sorts, but only kind of. An anchor point might be that for as much as Iceaura and I fight within our context, but we happen to emerge from very similar, and largely common literary-historical heritage; our American notion of social contract is woven into history and politics. We still have differences about it, but most of what keeps us fighting is other stuff, entirely; that's how fundamental social contract is to American political thought.

And while we might disagree about all that, some might disagree in another way. There are various arguments against the social contract, but few adherents who so identify; I actually owe someone else similar consideration in re rule of law↗, and there is some overlap, there. That is, rule of law is like a syllogism; its consistency is unto itself. A tyrant, for instance, can respect rule of law, at least according to abstract theory, but even still it is a sketchy social contract should we even call it that; generally speaking, people think of such arrangements as rackets. Still, though, I think of a cutscene from a video game as emblematic, because the cynical retort was not entirely removed from our neighbor's disdain. That is, as our hero extolled the virtues of democracy, Isaac the bartender replied that wealth and ownership of property of ownership were the only real freedom; the point was punctuated by the fact of the setting in a Hong Kong nightclub where, despite tyranny and apocalypse, people still had it in them to party. It's an interactive cutscene; those not interested in extolling democracy can choose a different route. Nonetheless, that counterpoint functionally rings much like our neighbor's argument, to "care about the freedoms important to you".

Yet our neighbor has chosen what seems another course, which is the general↑ delegitimization↑ of the social contract↑, and the application is to (A) promote his argument by disqualifying the counterpoint, and (B) change the subject so as not to come back to the faulty↑ equivocation↑ he would rather not defend.

Watch the birdie, so to speak. He can wreck his hope on the rocks all he wants, but there is no reason anyone else needs to follow him in.



The first two work. There is a symbiotic aspect. It's all a tangled mess.

Supremacism, dualism, neurosis.

Anthropologically, there is an instinctive sensation or notion of tacit supremacism that seems to accompany familiarity. In the fiction of Steven Brust, an elven species insists on calling itself "human", and why not, since most days they can thrash humans. But this is not conjured from thin air; he refers, obliquely, to a feature of language in which the xenophobia of self and other, us and them, is simply a dimension of the experience, such as the word barbarian, which in turn derives from a word about creatures that sound funny; there is me, we, us, and then there are barbaros (βάρβαρος). By the time the Romans used the word, it was unmistakably pejorative.

Here we are, millennia later, and it seems almost unimaginable.

(¡cough!)​

There is also a basic dualism in such formulation, and, this is as strange or not as supremacism concomitant to familiarity.

The American neurosis is actually a massive, deep, impossibly complicated mess, but the part we see really is as superficial and desperate as it so often seems. This superficiality important to symbiotic considerations; sometimes being seen is as vital an endeavor as anything else. Consider mgtow, which isn't entirely a digression; the more accurate but less catchy term would be mbsgtow, because the object is to be men being seen going their own way, i.e., if they were really going their own way, then they wouldn't beg for women's attention in order to insult them on the way out the door.

And in such dimensions, neurotic tension can easily run rather quite shallow; it's hard to explain a particular press briefing that happened this week, but DHS Secretary Nielsen put on a show, Sunday and Monday, very nearly beyond belief. Quite clearly the most apparent stressor of being seen as the one in charge of an American atrocity against children is having some effect.

But there is a deeper aspect, and this goes back to questions of social contract, rule of law, and other such mysteries and philosophical aspects of civilized society. Consider, for a moment, that equality, between people and before the law, is an inevitable necessity of civilized society. Juxtapose that with a consideration of social contract:

The ultimate goal, then, of social contract theories is to show, in the most general sense, that social (moral, political, legal, etc.) rules can be rationally justified. This does not, however, distinguish the social contract from other approaches in moral and political philosophy, all of which attempt to show that moral and political rules are rationally justifiable in some sense. The true distinctiveness of the social contract approach is that justification does not rely on some exogenous reason or truth.

(D'Agostino, Gaus, and Thrasher↱)​

The problem with exogenous reason or truth, as such, is that it is, in the context of what social contract seeks to resolve, arbitrary. We might consider, then, neurosis near to the heart of conscience; it is not simply that others in society superficially disapprove of one's behavior, but, rather, that the arbitrary justification of authority can be arbitrarily usurped. Superficial disapproval can be buried under ego defense, to be certain, but its real problem is that it reminds a conscience of vulnerability not understood. Nobody likes being reminded they are afraid.

And this fear, more than your or my disapproval, informing they are wrong. This is the dualism: Us, them. Right, wrong. Good, evil. Thus, there is prejudice (us), recognition (not right), and assessment (therefore not good). While, yes, it is bad to be called a racist because it is bad to be a racist, most are arriving at that moment of protest through pathways that would seem rather quite strange to others under the circumstances.

Furthermore, part of what we need to bear in mind is that this all happens recursively on the fly; "modulated self preservation of quasi-creativity seeking self actualisation" is an overcomplicated statement that is not without merit. Each of the components is well enough, but imagine collective individual neurotic stress expressed in communal cult shaping code leading to catechismal creed with every factor simultaneously, independently and interdependently, dynamically, recursively, and perpetually transforming both phase and valence, and rarely or never resolved so accurately or stably to be identified according to itself such that it can only be identified according to the composite it lends to. Or maybe I should have gone with modulated might be too precise, but self-preservation, quasi-creativity, and self-actualization are all in play, and when pressed even the religious will admit God doesn't know what it all adds up to in any given moment.

And it seems worth noting, therein we also find elements of psychosocial symbiosis.

The bigots, as such, only know they are accused; should they perceive no exposure, they would react differently. The exposure they fear isn't bigotry itself, but being wrong, and therefore evil, and therefore weak. As noted, our neighbor presents an argument that is fundamentally about empowerment. Evil is to the beholder. Wrong, as a functional matter, means weakness, and that is dangerous.



It's also part of our Christian heritage. To wit, Max Weber. There is a reason the book is called, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism↱.

Those who burned witches behaved as if they were somehow above accusation, which is important since part of the justification is in Matthew 25, to do or not unto the least of His brethren. It's easy to hope they would do the same for you if you convince yourself they never would. History also reminds that Torquemada was Jewish.
____________________

Notes:

D'Agostino, Fred, Gerald Gaus, and John Thrasher. "Contemporary Approaches to the Social Contract". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 31 May 2017. Plato.Stanford.edu. 19 June 2018. https://stanford.io/2lmd2ZI

the madding turbulence of self preservation lends to polarisation as if it were pure logic incarnate.
a las poor culture it knew its self. only to find wanting. a want so pursuent to the self that only tacit fundermentalism can delivery its saviour.

 

[pjdude1219]

Double bullshit. This decision to separate parents from children was adjudicated in 1997 by the 9th circuit court.

Triple Bullshit. as a matter of policy up until trump deportations were civil proceedings and families were kept together. trump changed that. your lying to defend a authortarian borderline fascist thug. typical right winger will go to any lengths to aviod having to be responsible for your actions and beliefs. this is all on trump and the people who support him.

 

[origin]

Double bullshit. This decision to separate parents from children was adjudicated in 1997 by the 9th circuit court.

Sessions said that it is a change in policy (zero tolerance - separating kids from their parents) and the change is to act as a deterrent to illegal immigration. He also said that this policy came from the top. I disagree with Session's politics, but I think he is a basically honest person so I will take him at his word that this a policy change that was purposely initiated to deter illegal immigration.

If you think this is alright to do to curb immigration, that is your right, but don't pretend that Trump or Sessions 'hands are tied' because of the law!

 

[origin]

I don't understand this. I argue for the freedom of all people (not only me) to care about the freedoms important to them, and to find a community which provides this freedom.

I think it is so cool that we have our very own Russian Troll trying to inflame discontent in the US.

 

[Schmelzer]

I think it is so cool that we have our very own Russian Troll trying to inflame discontent in the US.

In fact, the libertarian program is a way to reduce and to minimize discontent.

The closest thing to a libertarian order in the real world is Swiss. A state which is extremely decentralized, so that in different parts live people of different nationalities, they even speak different languages and there is nonetheless no conflict over this. Ever heard about discontent inside Swiss? For Swiss citizens, the major of the village is more important than some central government somewhere in Bern or so, nobody cares. Some elements of this exist also in the US, in the past that was much stronger (ok, in the past it was stronger in Swiss too). In Russia, it exists only in an informal way (the tsar is far away, so who cares), but even 70 years of communism were unable to destroy it.

 

[Tiassa]

[1/2]​

Makes no sense. The solution found in the actual agreement was how to circumvent the nuclear issue so that it no longer prevents signing a peace contract. A peace contract would be the solution for many problems in Korea. I support both claims all the time, no "gone from to". The discussion about social contract is about something completely different.

It's a basic matter of language. If the solution found is to find a solution, you might as well suggest we have finally overcome death because two people agreed to someday maybe start working on a resurrection machine. Addtiionally, you have agued that the solution to the problem is to circumvent the problem by pretending it isn't a problem.

This looks like a general tendency in many discussions - the focus on personal accusations, instead of trying to discuss some content in a neutral language.

Consider, for instance, what some might criticize as a ppearance of dishonesty. Your complaint would much better suit a circumstance when you're not being observably ... what, then? If not dishonest, then what? Consider this example:

Schmelzer↑: Arsonists have done their work in 1950. After 1953, there was no real fire. So, your comparison does not really fit. But, if you like to use this picture, ok, my variant. Trump throws a big bucket of water into a fire made by Obama, lying at the same time "no, this is not for extinguishing that fire, I will continue to arson in two years, don't worry".

Tiassa↑: The problem with your variant is its parodical sloth: You omit 1994 (Bill Clinton) and 2003-2009 (Bush Jr., Six-Party Talks), the latter required to deal with George W. Bush's flame job; Dubya set the situation on fire, and here you are complaining about the fire crews. Yes, yes, your historical narrative works great, we know, if we just ignore history.

Schmelzer↑: I have no reason at all to ignore history. It is irrelevant for me which of the criminal US presidents you blame for setting the situation on fire and which you name a fire crew.

Tiassa↑: Well, it is relevant when you assert inaccurate historical arguments—e.g., "... After 1953, there was no real fire. So, your comparison does not really fit. But, if you like to use this picture, ok, my variant. Trump throws a big bucket of water into a fire made by Obama"—you are ignoring history in such a manner that undermines the rest of your analysis. If you must continually play word games, then you're doing it wrong.

Schmelzer↑: Feel free to think that I'm ignoring history, but if you make such claims, present evidence for this.​

We should note that last arrived at that line obliquely, responding to criticism of pretending a cease-fire is somehow "peace" instead of addressing the example given. It's a clumsy maneuver:

#2852: Schmelzer asserts dearth of activity from 1953-2009.

#2861: Tiassa asserts omissions of history, providing examples (Clinton, Bush Jr.) from late in the indicated period.

#2862: Schmelzer responds, explicitly, "I have no reason at all to ignore history", explaining that his argument doesn't care about the differences: "It is irrelevant for me which of the criminal US presidents you blame for setting the situation on fire and which you name a fire crew."

#2868: Tiassa reminds, explicitly, "it is relevant when you assert inaccurate historical arguments—e.g., '... After 1953, there was no real fire.'"

#2871: Despite having responded to an example of omitting history by arguing he has no reason to do so, and, furthermore, the omitted history in general doesn't matter, Schmelzer declares, "Feel free to think that I'm ignoring history, but if you make such claims, present evidence for this", without addressing the evidence already before him.​

So when you complain that criticism feels too personal, please do remember what it actually says. Here, let's look at your botch job; this is what you quoted:

... I simply don't believe you're that stupid, ... you abide this dysfunctional, detached, thoughtless, self-centered gaslight definition of ... your lazy equivocation↑ ... Your cynicism ... it seems to coincide with bigotry, but its weird dimensions are symptomatic of your application. ... the underlying antisocial attitudes saturate your presentation​

It stands out how much you must omit in order to pretend offense:

• The first thing is to note the temptation to say I simply don't believe you're that stupid, because the contrast would be that we're actually witnessing something slightly different.​

You only needed to strike the contrast point in order to hold what is otherwise being set aside in place in order to pretend offense: We're actually witnessing something other than fundamental human incompetence otherwise described as stupidity. And, apparently, this alternative offends you. Very well, then, I stand corrected.

• If we look at your line as the second in a discursive exchange, the counterpoint to a point and that is all, then we consider one set of functional problems. If, however, we view your line further downstream, such as a third, fourth, or fifth point in an exchange, then it seems somewhat non sequitur.

That is to say, sure, we get that you abide this dysfunctional, detached, thoughtless, self-centered gaslight definition of social contract, and that is what it is, but it's all just a two-bit distraction, because when we cut through it all we're right back to your lazy equivocation↑ and the glaring differences↑ 'twixt social contracts posturing government of and for people, to the one, and social contracts subjecting people to government.​

Again, you strike a larger contrast in order to pretend offense. "If we look at your line", refers to an exogenous and unsupported assertion of social contract fulfilling its expected purpose, which is to generally delegitimize social contract. And, yes, you really do present yourself poorly on the noted count: If someone just happened to say something, and you said that in response, well, it is an interesting proposition; however, when we look at its place in the larger discourse, i.e., "view your line further downstream, such as a third, fourth, or fifth point in an exchange", then it really does stand out as a change of subject, as you are insisting on a proposition antithetical to literary and historical assertions of social contract. As its own discussion, it probably needs its own thread. As a distraction from discussions of basic function as relates to your equivocation, though, it's not a well-manufactured component. Which, in turn, is its own question, and you're still trying to hide from it, but we'll come back to it after getting through this part of the mess.

• In this moment, though, what stands out is simply this: Your cynicism versus multiple societies that have survived multiple human lifetimes isn't much of a contest; that you must insist everyone else should abide your fantasies in order that you might pretend to have a point is functionally problematic.​

The latter contends insistence, asserting it functionally problematic to require everyone change the context of their discussion to a personal thesis delegitimizing social contract according to what you can imagine; as to imagination, anyone can try imagining why such assertions of dysfunction might offend you, but only you can actually explain, as such, your imagination.

The former pertains to your statement that social contract is "a lie, a trick" because it doesn't suit your aesthetics—i.e. "I was never asked to sign it"—which, in turn, is not how it works, ever worked, or ever will work according to rational justification of rules. This particular dysfunction, for the sake of your say-so despite historical demonstration—i.e., "versus multiple societies that have survived multiple human lifetimes"—really is cynical, and there really isn't any contest.

These are some of the issues you managed to pass over while complaining about "personal accusations" and "personal attacks".

Last but not least, we started here with discussing a rather abstract concept of justification of some particular system as a "social contract", which I criticize because it is misleading, given that it uses the word "contract" even if a key element - volitional agreement with the contract by all participants - does not exist.

At least this time you quoted it ("lazy equivocation") when slicing up for the sake of your complaint, but as I previously noted, this all leads right back to your lazy equivocation and the glaring differences 'twixt social contracts posturing government of and for people, to the one, and social contracts subjecting people to government. That's why you need social contract delegitimized.

[(cont.)]​

 

[Tiassa]

[2/2]​

I don't understand this. I argue for the freedom of all people (not only me) to care about the freedoms important to them, and to find a community which provides this freedom.

The most straightforward response, as such, probably feels like a personal attack: You're not thinking it through.

As a comparative, I would offer leftist Anarchists. As near and dear to my heart as late nineteenth and early twentieth century Anarchist literature can run, it often seems short on solutions, because there was a tacit mystery period in the argument, when everything works out, somehow, because people just get along with one another. It's very similar to the reason Trotskyism, with its small organizational cells, struggles. One of the operating realities leftists have largely failed to appropriately address is that people tend more toward work and play, and not, work for food and then spend the rest of the day obsessing over every political detail of their lives.

Once upon a time, it was indeed this sort of idealism that conservatism assailed about the left. Consider Iceaura's critique↑:

That is in direct conflict with your science fiction fantasy of commercial and economic contracts made within an industrial economy between organizations of people disparate in power, without government enforcement.
And it is in comprehensive conflict not only with various political theorizing, but with game theory and anthropology and evolutionary biology and so forth - long list.​

Your response↑ is pretty clear:

Many communities have such contracts - like clubs and associations, where participation requires your explicit acceptance of the contract. A state is something different. One cannot exclude that there may be mini-states, which could work that way. Gated communities can be, in principle, mini-states with a social contract.​

And you reiterated it in the same post, responding to me:

All one needs are sufficiently small "states", of the size of a gated community. You live there because you have signed, volitionally, the social contract of that particular mini-state. Contracts signed volitionally by hundred or thousands of people are quite realistic. If you later decide that your signature was an error, you are free to terminate the contract and to leave, and there will be a lot of other mini-states open to joining them if you, volitionally, sign their social contract.​

It is an ahistorical projection, to be certain; I used the word "antihistorical"↑—

Meanwhile, antihistorical, antisocial empowerment fantasies are fine casual distractions, but they aren't much for logic or rhetoric, and probably have greater value in a context akin to Brown's post-Freudian psychoanalytic meaning of history than as any proposition of rational argument.​

—in the part you skipped over; these aspects are important, and pretending hurt feelings or insisting on what you imagine in lieu of the historical record we have is your own choice. A freudian saying is that if you let people talk long enough, they eventually tell you the truth. The catch is that by now, well, there's an "app" for that in our ego-defense array; humans are extraordinarily adaptive. The version you seem to be using is to simply feel confused and hurt by what disagrees with you.

The problem is your constriction of freedom, such as "freedoms important to them", or, "freedoms important to you". Like I said, your appeal is same thing we hear from Americans who focus on particular "economic justice" arguments, and the reason I say these are seemingly custom-tailored to preclude real justice has much to do with the contexts by which we hear about them. The American conservative-Democratic argument, for instance, is to focus on "economic justice" because it upsets white men to hear about women and people of color, though that dispute pertains to a narrow demographic bloc in a small handful of states believed crucial to winning in a state-by-state contest.

As you put it, the "freedoms important to you", or "them", or, as such, individuals. Yours is essentially a cooperative-separatist agreement justified by ignoring the challenges such schemes present as not being important to whomever. But like "economic justice", it is impossible to parse out some microlabels from certain larger whole paradigms. The larger result, as even American history shows, is that one has the freedom to submit to the syndicate; in the 1980s, the American centrist censorship argument was that you had free speech, but not the freedom to offend, which in function meant offending Christianity in general, white Christians in particular, and white male Christians especially. As the century turned, we had the argument about gay people being free to be heterosexual, and maybe if this didn't coincide with pervasive exploitation fantasy it would have sounded merely stupid instead of grotesque and psychiatrically sick. And when they lost that fight, people pursuing te freedoms immportant to them went after women again, because you are free to seek medical care, but only if it suits someone else's religious aesthetics. These are the freedoms people cared about. It's also the reason people like gated communities. Hell, at one point early in the latter-day "Tea Party" movement there was a fascinating dispute down in Arizona, I think, between a homeowner flying the Gadsden flag, and the neighborhood association demanding compliance with the CCRs one agreed to when buying a house in the community. The short version of the point is the word ahistorical.

It is also why the argument that, "This in no way aims to decide for others what is important for them", requires rather quite especial development, but at some point you are necessarily relying on the same kind of utopiate mystery period by which everyone learns to get along.

Trust me, if the point is to have communities without black people, Jews, Muslims, queers, &c., few will be surprised. Indeed, it's kind of awkward watching you try to dance around it like that:

This in no way aims to decide for others what is important for them. The monk will be free to submit to an extremely rigorous social contract of a monastery, and this may include also rules for Lent which may oblige him to go hungry sometimes. But this would be his personal decision, and would not be my requirement. People are different, and the idea of a worldwide unique universal set of laws obligatory for everybody is a quite horrible one. A sexual (or whatever) addict may prefer a society which helps him to fight his addiction by not tolerating his addictive behavior, a gay will prefer a society which tolerates his sexual choices. And a communist would be also free to find a community without private property and equality between all members of the community, in full agreement with his personal ideas about justice and equality and his prejudices against any form of selfishness.

And in the end, you come out and say it.

More functionally, even if we decide to play along with your ahistorical imagination, the first time the contracted collective must enforce its contracts, it invokes a competition, which of course can be addressed with more contracts that might eventually need to be enforced, which will create more competition that can be addressed with more contracts that might eventually need to be enforced, which will create even more competition that can be addressed with more contracts that might eventually need to be enforced. Your argument describes an end result akin to pitching a weekly anime serial by which people living in their perfect Sims gated communities must strike alliances and play like Civilization in order to build large enough contracted collectives to survive competiton. And, quite frankly, most people can figure out the problem of returning to tribes and chiefdoms in order to re-establish states and repeat the dooms of history all over again. Such as it is, we've gone from lazy equivocation without regard to function to lazy fantasy without regard to function.

And digressive fantasies just don't count for much much in legitimizing or justifying the Kim regime in North Korea.

The one part that isn't a mystery, Schmelzer, is the end result of antisocial fantasies.

[(fin)]​

 

[iceaura]

The closest thing to a libertarian order in the real world is Swiss.

High taxes collected at gunpoint, military conscription, mandatory health insurance and care heavily regulated by the State, tight restrictions on residence and citizenship, onerous vice laws and community restrictions on behavior including corporate and financial, etc - there are many regions of the world suffering under far less of a State burden on the free individual than the Swiss. Plus, they have adopted the social contract as a governing principle - Le Concorde Suisse is their explicit ideological basis for universal conscription into the military, their cantonal organization, etc.

No. Accepting some evil as practically unavoidable in the actual world does not mean to agree with it.

That's potentially true of the terms of any contract you find unavoidable. Doesn't mean you didn't make it.

?????????????

You don't know what time clocks are? Drug testing? Employment contracts in general?

But this does not change the point that this "social contract" is not a contract, because they do not even ask me to sign it.

"They"? Don't you mean "we"? You are living in this community, after all, by hypothesis.
Meanwhile, we have the self-proclaimed libertarian claiming the nonexistence of handshakes, verbal agreements, standing policies, promises, implied consent, customary child raising and child behavior, and anything else that isn't written down and signed in every detail. A world in which good faith is not an obligation, even, much less a law. A world in which the speed limits at school crossings are not obligatory unless the driver has signed the appropriate forms in each and every school district they traverse - and traversal restricted accordingly, one presumes.
That's freedom?

Makes no sense. The solution found in the actual agreement was how to circumvent the nuclear issue so that it no longer prevents signing a peace contract.

No such solution was found. That manner of circumventing the nuclear issue has been the status quo since the 1950s, written down in diplomatic agreements since the 1990s, and it hasn't solved anything yet.

which I criticize because it is misleading, given that it uses the word "contract" even if a key element - volitional agreement with the contract by all participants - does not exist.

It does exist. There are even specific terms for those who do not agree, and are therefore not participants, in different ways - outcasts, foreigners, gang-bangers, vagrants, gypsies, etc.

I argue for the freedom of all people (not only me) to care about the freedoms important to them, and to find a community which provides this freedom. This in no way aims to decide for others what is important for them.

You prefer fascism over other governance, consistently, whenever presented with the choice. You have explicitly defended the imposition of racial restrictions and burdens by the rich and powerful upon unconsenting members of the target race on a continental scale. You favor allowing the powerful and wealthy free rule over anyone they can entrap via their ownership and control of resources. This is on record here.

And the latest example of that preference of yours, the Trump presidency, is currently living up to the predictions of those who do not prefer fascism over other governance. It turns out that the "nationalism" you favor involves violent and abusive defense of whatever State boundaries the strongman takes an interest in, and that your disregard of the social contract is something else you share with American rightwing corporate capitalist authoritarians - in this case, the part where we all agree that mothers and their children are not to be separated beyond absolute necessity, and that people who take children from their parents and put them in cages as a deterrence to those parents are horrible scum who should be - at a minimum - made outcast from our society.

 

[Schmelzer]

It's a basic matter of language. If the solution found is to find a solution, you might as well suggest we have finally overcome death because two people agreed to someday maybe start working on a resurrection machine. Addtiionally, you have agued that the solution to the problem is to circumvent the problem by pretending it isn't a problem.

The language issue is simply a confusion between two solutions corresponding to two different problems.

Then, there is the fact that NK has nuclear missiles. This is something no reasonable person likes. But once this has happened, we have to live with it. With murdering Ghadafi, the West has sent a message, and, as a consequence of this message, no non-suicidal dictator with nuclear weapons would give them away. I do not think that this is not a problem, but I consider it to be an unsolvable one. And I do not care about solutions for unsolvable problems.

About your reconsideration of our discussion: I have to admit that I have, during this communication, a big problem of simply understanding what your point is, what you claim. If I say that after 1953 there was no real fire, I think this is rather uncontroversial - there have been millions death from 1950-53, and nothing comparable in the number of victims after this. Of course, the history after this was also up and down, Cold War changing with negotiations and some detente some time, and one can also name some of this time "fire" and some other one not. And, again, this is nothing but an attempt to explain the meaning of what I have written. I cannot argue with you without understanding what you mean, what is your point.

It stands out how much you must omit in order to pretend offense:

What I have omitted is what I was unable to make sense of. The only thing I was able to understand were those personal attacks - it was clear that they were personal attacks. Feel free to think that your arguments are easy to understand for everybody and that not understanding them means that I'm stupid. So be it. I'm a mathematician, and some (not only one) of my teachers have liked to pretend they are completely stupid, to force me to explain everything in every minor detail of my answers.

What to do in such a situation? I don't know. I have praised Iceaura for presenting, contrary to the usual way, arguments about the content in the question "Obama left or right". The answer was the promise never to do such things again. This shows that, beyond the obvious political disagreement, there is also much more wrong on the level of communication itself. My usual way does not work: If I'm unable to understand what my opponent is talking about, I try to make sense of what he writes, and try to answer his points - but this fails, and if it two times fails, I give two answers to two different questions. And you, as the consequence, see contradictions.

Again, you strike a larger contrast in order to pretend offense. "If we look at your line", refers to an exogenous and unsupported assertion of social contract fulfilling its expected purpose, which is to generally delegitimize social contract. And, yes, you really do present yourself poorly on the noted count: If someone just happened to say something, and you said that in response, well, it is an interesting proposition; however, when we look at its place in the larger discourse, i.e., "view your line further downstream, such as a third, fourth, or fifth point in an exchange", then it really does stand out as a change of subject, as you are insisting on a proposition antithetical to literary and historical assertions of social contract. As its own discussion, it probably needs its own thread. As a distraction from discussions of basic function as relates to your equivocation, though, it's not a well-manufactured component. Which, in turn, is its own question, and you're still trying to hide from it, but we'll come back to it after getting through this part of the mess.

Here I can at least extract some sense. I will simply say what I see here, without any pretense of the correct interpretation of this text. In particular, I see here the point that "social contract" is a philosophical theory with quite different aspects, and that my rejection of this theory covers only one particular aspect. This point I have no problem to accept. Then I see here the pretense that my intention is, in this way, to "generally delegitimize social contract". Which I reject. Again, I'm a mathematician and think mathematically. A single minor error is sufficient for me to reject a proof. It does not imply that I have anything to object to other parts of the same proof.

I also agree that this is off-topic here and would require a separate thread. The question would be if, given our communication problems, this thread would give something. Look for Sokal's hoax to get some understanding of impression your texts create in my mind.

Repetitions of some points I have been unable to understand already in their first appearance has not improved my understanding, so there is nothing to comment here.

 

[iceaura]

Double bullshit. This decision to separate parents from children was adjudicated in 1997 by the 9th circuit court.

So you post as evidence of that evil idiocy a court decision concerning the handling of -> unaccompanied <- refugee minors.

You know, what to do if some evil people or desperate circumstances had separated a refugee child from its parents. Because those were the choices back then: evil, or desperation. The idea that official US policy would be doing something like that was not on the table.

It's a difficult question. The Court ruled on that, how how best to handle that miserable and regrettable situation, should the morally sound and well-motivated and properly guided agents of the US government encounter such a consequence of evil or desperation. Because it was actually happening, see: evil and desperation were involved, on the border.

One of the issues before the Court - and the US agents involved - is whether possibly the parents or relatives abetted, cooperated, engaged in such abuse for inadequate reasons - because there would be serious objections to handing a child over into the care of such people. The kinds of people who take children from their mothers to get what they want from the mothers are not generally considered fit guardians of children, right?

Did you miss that little detail? Slip by your alert radar?
Or are you human garbage, willing to post anything at all to obscure and confuse the clear assessment of yet another voluntary American government policy, yet another Republican administration's policy, that is insupportable by decent human beings?

 

[Schmelzer]

The most straightforward response, as such, probably feels like a personal attack: You're not thinking it through.

As a comparative, I would offer leftist Anarchists. As near and dear to my heart as late nineteenth and early twentieth century Anarchist literature can run, it often seems short on solutions, because there was a tacit mystery period in the argument, when everything works out, somehow, because people just get along with one another.

Sounds like the old (and correct) argument that anarchism simply does not work. And that anarchists don't argue about this, so what there is is a sort of "mystery period". If this would be the point, then, sorry, this is nothing you can justly accuse me here based on a few postings. This could be discussed in a really separate thread about libertarianism, and if it is utopian in the negative sense (unrealistic). I have a proposal about how in the current society that "mystery period" could be started which would end in a libertarian world.

It is an ahistorical projection, to be certain; I used the word "antihistorical"↑—

Meanwhile, antihistorical, antisocial empowerment fantasies are fine casual distractions, but they aren't much for logic or rhetoric, and probably have greater value in a context akin to Brown's post-Freudian psychoanalytic meaning of history than as any proposition of rational argument.​

—in the part you skipped over; these aspects are important, and pretending hurt feelings or insisting on what you imagine in lieu of the historical record we have is your own choice.

They may be important, but I simply cannot respond to them if I'm unable to make sense of them. So, as my teachers of mathematics have told me, explain it slowly, slowly, as if I'm completely stupid.

The problem is your constriction of freedom, such as "freedoms important to them", or, "freedoms important to you". Like I said, your appeal is same thing we hear from Americans who focus on particular "economic justice" arguments, and the reason I say these are seemingly custom-tailored to preclude real justice has much to do with the contexts by which we hear about them. The American conservative-Democratic argument, for instance, is to focus on "economic justice" because it upsets white men to hear about women and people of color, though that dispute pertains to a narrow demographic bloc in a small handful of states believed crucial to winning in a state-by-state contest.

And I don't understand this argument completely. "Economic justice" is, from what I know about those who propose it, a variant of egalitarian ideology, which heavily opposes free markets, which I support. And even if economy and freedom, in general, are different domains, the basic issue is the same. I defend freedom of choice, with resulting differences between those who make different choices, while all the various "economic justice" of "social justice" warriors fight for a totalitarian equality. Maybe this is not fair to your "economic justice" warriors, but I simply don't see anything I would have in common with them.

Yours is essentially a cooperative-separatist agreement justified by ignoring the challenges such schemes present as not being important to whomever. But like "economic justice", it is impossible to parse out some microlabels from certain larger whole paradigms. The larger result, as even American history shows, is that one has the freedom to submit to the syndicate; in the 1980s, the American centrist censorship argument was that you had free speech, but not the freedom to offend, which in function meant offending Christianity in general, white Christians in particular, and white male Christians especially. As the century turned, we had the argument about gay people being free to be heterosexual, and maybe if this didn't coincide with pervasive exploitation fantasy it would have sounded merely stupid instead of grotesque and psychiatrically sick. And when they lost that fight, people pursuing te freedoms immportant to them went after women again, because you are free to seek medical care, but only if it suits someone else's religious aesthetics. These are the freedoms people cared about. It's also the reason people like gated communities. Hell, at one point early in the latter-day "Tea Party" movement there was a fascinating dispute down in Arizona, I think, between a homeowner flying the Gadsden flag, and the neighborhood association demanding compliance with the CCRs one agreed to when buying a house in the community. The short version of the point is the word ahistorical.

I see here a confusion between those "freedoms" allowed in some large societies, not based on explicit volitional acceptance by everybody, which are not freedoms you personally care about, but "freedoms" accepted in a given territory by the power to everybody, with the freedom I'm talking about. Only the last example is about something related: If that particular gated community had rules forbidding the Gadsden flag, and this guy has signed volitionally these rules without reading them, he has to blame himself. If this is only a nasty interpretation of the signed rules, one needs some arbitrage to find out if these rules really forbid the Gadsden flag or not. Beyond this, the example is irrelevant.
Feel free to name this ahistorical, it is indeed not about history. But not in conflict with what we know from history too.

It is also why the argument that, "This in no way aims to decide for others what is important for them", requires rather quite especial development, but at some point you are necessarily relying on the same kind of utopiate mystery period by which everyone learns to get along.

The problem of how a libertarian society can survive, and, even more difficult, how it can be created in a statist society, is, indeed. the most difficult problem of anarchism. But I do not rely on some "kind of utopiate mystery period" for this.

And digressive fantasies just don't count for much much in legitimizing or justifying the Kim regime in North Korea.

And why you think this has anything to do with legitimizing the Kim regime in NK? If it has to do with this, it is your rejection of libertarianism which could be used by Kim to justify his state.

 

[Schmelzer]

High taxes collected at gunpoint, military conscription, mandatory health insurance and care heavily regulated by the State, tight restrictions on residence and citizenship, onerous vice laws and community restrictions on behavior including corporate and financial, etc - there are many regions of the world suffering under far less of a State burden on the free individual than the Swiss. Plus, they have adopted the social contract as a governing principle - Le Concorde Suisse is their explicit ideological basis for universal conscription into the military, their cantonal organization, etc.

Of course, in some aspects. There is no universal way to measure freedom, because what is important for one person is unimportant for another one. And, of course, they are a constitutional state. And if you insist in naming this "social contract" your choice. I mention Swiss because it is in some aspects close to libertarian, certainly not in all.

You don't know what time clocks are? Drug testing? Employment contracts in general?

I don't understand what would have been the point of mentioning them in this context.

"They"? Don't you mean "we"? You are living in this community, after all, by hypothesis.

Whoever. The point is that I was not asked to sign it, and have not signed it, thus, it is not a contract.

Meanwhile, we have the self-proclaimed libertarian claiming the nonexistence of handshakes, verbal agreements, standing policies, promises, implied consent, customary child raising and child behavior, and anything else that isn't written down and signed in every detail.

Nonsense. This state has received from me neither handshakes nor verbal agreements. The other things you have mentioned are irrelevant in this context. It is the non-existence of agreement, not the non-existence of a written formalization of that agreement, which is the point.

A world in which good faith is not an obligation, even, much less a law. A world in which the speed limits at school crossings are not obligatory unless the driver has signed the appropriate forms in each and every school district they traverse - and traversal restricted accordingly, one presumes.
That's freedom?

Even more fantasies. As usual.

It does exist. There are even specific terms for those who do not agree, and are therefore not participants, in different ways - outcasts, foreigners, gang-bangers, vagrants, gypsies, etc.

And, do they have to pay taxes?

You prefer fascism over other governance, consistently, whenever presented with the choice.

More lies.

You have explicitly defended the imposition of racial restrictions and burdens by the rich and powerful upon unconsenting members of the target race on a continental scale.

And yet more lies.

You favor allowing the powerful and wealthy free rule over anyone they can entrap via their ownership and control of resources. This is on record here.

Feel free to quote it if it is on record. Else, it counts as yet another lie.

And the latest example of that preference of yours, the Trump presidency, is currently living up to the predictions of those who do not prefer fascism over other governance. It turns out that the "nationalism" you favor involves violent and abusive defense of whatever State boundaries the strongman takes an interest in, and that your disregard of the social contract is something else you share with American rightwing corporate capitalist authoritarians - in this case, the part where we all agree that mothers and their children are not to be separated beyond absolute necessity, and that people who take children from their parents and put them in cages as a deterrence to those parents are horrible scum who should be - at a minimum - made outcast from our society.

I do not favor nationalism, it is only less evil than the internationalism of a globalist world power. I do not favor fascism over other governance, but only over US world rule. You have forgotten to mention that 2+2=4 is also something I share with evil Hitler. You cannot know what I think about this issue of taking children from their parents, because I have not written anything about this, so that associating me with those who do such things is yet another defamation, and a too big one to ignore it, so that EOD.

 

[iceaura]

Look for Sokal's hoax to get some understanding of impression your texts create in my mind.

So you have Sokal's Hoax in your armory, but the campaign to reclassify fascism as a leftwing ideology was news to you.
Every single wingnut meme. Every. single. one. Everything you post without a personal reality base is from that bubble - even the legit stuff, like Sokal's punking.

What to do in such a situation? I don't know. I have praised Iceaura for presenting, contrary to the usual way, arguments about the content in the question "Obama left or right".

You had seen those items of evidence, and that argument, and several other items of evidence with that argument, at least a half dozen times.
You often responded to a new time by claiming not to have seen the earlier ones. That's just something you do - refuse to acknowledge what has been posted in front of you multiple times, and demand that it be dredged up again and reposted again and linked again - all with the predictable result of you blowing it off, learning nothing, and then repeating the whole shmear when enough time has passed to make it a chore for somebody else.

The lefty bloggers have long ago noticed and registered that pattern - demands for repetition of the long established, denial and demands for proof of what was common knowledge last year, demands for definitions of terms perfectly clear a couple of weeks ago, etc etc, all of it blocking and obscuring discussion - among those trapped in the American wingnut bubble, across multiple venues and issues and lines of exchange. It's so common it has a name or two, so we can talk about you guys and what you're up to. My favorite borrowed term for the larger pattern is "Strategic Forgettery",
https://crooksandliars.com/2015/12/dr-krugman-explains-strategic-forgettery
but I use my own "amnesiac" and "calculated amnesia" and so forth for the limited sense of "forgot what you've seen on this forum" stuff.

So, as my teachers of mathematics have told me, explain it slowly, slowly, as if I'm completely stupid.

That doesn't work, with you. It just makes more work for other people on top of the repetition you demand - a common pattern, with you.
Meanwhile: while Trump feeds the flames on the border, stretching the immigration sensational stuff out to as close to the midterms as he can, the Republicans in Congress are doing this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-budget/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.3a9376dbca0b

The Republican budget (apparently slated for a vote after the midterms, these guys are not suicidal) has some interesting features: it assumes repeal of the ACA, assumes repeal of Dodd-Frank banking regulations, assumes partial privatization of Medicare, assumes work requirements for things like Medicaid and food stamps, and so forth. But no cuts to the military.

 

[iceaura]

And if you insist in naming this "social contract" your choice

It was the Swiss choice.

Nonsense. This state has received from me neither handshakes nor verbal agreements.

You chose your residence, entered into a community's social contract.

- - - The other things you have mentioned are irrelevant in this context. It is the non-existence of agreement, not the non-existence of a written formalization of that agreement, which is the point.

Then we'll hear no more from you about what you have and have not signed.

I mention Swiss because it is in some aspects close to libertarian, certainly not in all.

You claimed it was closest - but many other regions are far closer. Many have almost no State level governance at all. The Swiss government is more intrusive even than many other First World central governments - such as Canada's, or the US.

What you chose was the most libertarianish government you could find that wasn't running a shithole. And you had to compromise heavily - because State governments that don't keep corporate capitalism in check, tax the rich and powerful, and intrude on things like medical care and racial or religious conflict, are mostly governing shitholes.

I do not favor fascism over other governance, but only over US world rule.

You have favored the fascist, or the more fascist, in every comparison you've made to date.

You have forgotten to mention that 2+2=4 is also something I share with evil Hitler.

And everyone else. So when Hitler claims Relativity Theory is falsely biased by Jews, you have a reality base from which to evaluate that claim. You won't be posting, in public, that the preponderance of supportive, admiring stories about that Theory, with no negative stories, indicates bias from Jewish influence on the media and the State.
But you share no such reality base with American political and media analysts, or climate change researchers, or ecologists and economists investigating trends and equilibria, or historians of the American Civil War, etc. You have no defenses against the American pros in those matters.

Even when Trump is right in front of you, restarting the US "enhanced interrogation" program and appointing one of its overseeing officers to high position, returning the drone wars to CIA control and expanding them, using border and immigration issues to shift the Overton Window on domestic deployment of militarized "police" forces, openly admiring autocrats who appoint themselves heads of State indefinitely, establishing alliances with strongman rulers worldwide, using his office for capitalist corporate financial gain, and so forth, you see no looming risk.
Whereas others have seen him, or someone just like him, coming around in the Republican Party for decades now:
https://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2015/07/donald-ivana-trump-divorce-prenup-marie-brenner
BY MARIE BRENNER
SEPTEMBER 1, 1990 3:08 PM

“Donald is a believer in the big-lie theory,” his lawyer had told me. “If you say something again and again, people will believe you.”

And we know of at least one book that Donald Trump read as an adult:

Last April, perhaps in a surge of Czech nationalism, Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed. Kennedy now guards a copy of My New Order in a closet at his office, as if it were a grenade. Hitler’s speeches, from his earliest days up through the Phony War of 1939, reveal his extraordinary ability as a master propagandist.

“Did your cousin John give you the Hitler speeches?” I asked Trump.

Trump hesitated. “Who told you that?”

“I don’t remember,” I said.

“Actually, it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of Mein Kampf, and he’s a Jew.” (“I did give him a book about Hitler,” Marty Davis said. “But it was My New Order, Hitler’s speeches, not Mein Kampf. I thought he would find it interesting. I am his friend, but I’m not Jewish.”)

Later, Trump returned to this subject. “If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them.”

 

[Quantum Quack]

Donald Trump signs executive order to end separation of immigrant families at US-Mexico border
It is to be expected I guess, that Trump's wife and daughter would finally influence Trump into dropping the separation of families on the border.
It is just really amazing and saddening that Trump lacked the vision and wisdom to know what he was doing in the first place.
src: www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-21/donald-trump-sign-executive-order-ending-family-separation/9892042

The whole world is enduring a migration crisis, and it needs to be addressed with a global strategy via a global body such as the UN. However as Trump deliberately attempts to destroy that global body he closes the door on any global strategy to deal with this huge refugee/migration problem. Inevitably this will lead to a yet another huge refugee camp(s) in the world on the Mexican/USA border.

There is little doubt that borders are being tightened if not closed around the globe and this leaves us all with the problem of what do to with millions of people trapped on those borders.
There is a solution beyond just building more camps IMO but it is one that requires a strong, audacious and well supported UN to carry out.
Unfortunately due to USA activity the UN has never been weaker IMO.
I am ominously reminded that the UN's primary charter was to prevent ww3 and as the UN is under mined by the USA and others, ww3 may be the inevitable outcome. (thus solving the refugee/migration problem by default)

 

[Quantum Quack]

“Actually, it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of Mein Kampf, and he’s a Jew.” (“I did give him a book about Hitler,” Marty Davis said. “But it was My New Order, Hitler’s speeches, not Mein Kampf. I thought he would find it interesting. I am his friend, but I’m not Jewish.”)

ahh... so that is why I often refer to Trump as Hitler incarnate...which is really weird when you think on the Jewish heritage that Trump may secretly hold.

Edit: Given that Hitler also had Jewish heritage I suppose it ain't that weird!