Meh, for me its far simpler. I simply refuse to be held to a higher standard for POTUS, and quite frankly anyone incapable of handling a bit of rough rhetoric is unserious and untrustworthy.
What needs to be explored is that basic dynamic of feedback, because it is foundational to reality. We assume there is some stable substrate to reality, be it matter, math, God, money, ideology, etc, but structure is recursive. It build on priors, like rings of a tree, using whatever energy it can incorporate.
With the information age, this dynamic has gone parabolic. Cycles that played out over generations had compressed into years and now it would seem, with our current president, news cycles.
Drug addiction is a feedback loop. Wealth and power leveraging more wealth and power is a feedback loop. The feedback loops need the occasional circuit breakers. We need an intervention.
Yet that would mean understanding the basic nature of these rabbit holes, echo chambers, cults.
It’s all form over substance. It’s a distraction from democrats doing the real work of actually figuring out why people don’t vote for them and fixing their platform.
What are the odds of the Dems bringing forth a modern Cincinnatus, a benevolent dictator only willing to use the powers to restore the Nation before returning to quiet retirement?
I’d say nearly zero: though there are firebrands who probably would be of the right character, the DNC won’t let them near a nomination.
Even if the candidates & the electorate are on side, until the party machinery gets on side it’s all rearranging deck chairs as the Titanic sinks.
Yet another disheartening race to the bottom! I think I prefer the general direction of Benjamin Franklin's sage advice: "Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none."
“Even movements of counterculture eventually curdle into their own brand of conformity. Anti-establishment movements build their own establishments.” ✅
Power is the end-all, be-all for activists on the polarities. Always has been. They don’t care about the downstream societal effects of dehumanizing rhetoric as long as when the dust settles, they're the ones setting the agenda.
An incredibly important topic.
Meh, for me its far simpler. I simply refuse to be held to a higher standard for POTUS, and quite frankly anyone incapable of handling a bit of rough rhetoric is unserious and untrustworthy.
Mortimer.
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Yes, Messir?
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Why do people become what they oppose?
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To defeat it, perhaps.
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And do they?
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Sometimes.
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And what do they become afterward?
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What they defeated.
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How economical.
The system only had to build one machine.
Everyone volunteered to become a copy.
What needs to be explored is that basic dynamic of feedback, because it is foundational to reality. We assume there is some stable substrate to reality, be it matter, math, God, money, ideology, etc, but structure is recursive. It build on priors, like rings of a tree, using whatever energy it can incorporate.
With the information age, this dynamic has gone parabolic. Cycles that played out over generations had compressed into years and now it would seem, with our current president, news cycles.
Drug addiction is a feedback loop. Wealth and power leveraging more wealth and power is a feedback loop. The feedback loops need the occasional circuit breakers. We need an intervention.
Yet that would mean understanding the basic nature of these rabbit holes, echo chambers, cults.
My most current take;
https://substack.com/@johnmerryman/p-193985079
It’s all form over substance. It’s a distraction from democrats doing the real work of actually figuring out why people don’t vote for them and fixing their platform.
What are the odds of the Dems bringing forth a modern Cincinnatus, a benevolent dictator only willing to use the powers to restore the Nation before returning to quiet retirement?
I’d say nearly zero: though there are firebrands who probably would be of the right character, the DNC won’t let them near a nomination.
Even if the candidates & the electorate are on side, until the party machinery gets on side it’s all rearranging deck chairs as the Titanic sinks.
Really excellent read. Elegantly written.
I also enjoyed that you express your own personal well formed opinion.
Refreshing to read an intellectual description with a personal opinion.
Yet another disheartening race to the bottom! I think I prefer the general direction of Benjamin Franklin's sage advice: "Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none."
“Even movements of counterculture eventually curdle into their own brand of conformity. Anti-establishment movements build their own establishments.” ✅
Superb.
There is no equivalence here , although the author tries to argue that there is.
2 people are to share a cookie.
1 says “you split the cookie in half and i get to choose my half”
The other says “no”
Then the 1st offers to “split the cookie and You choose your half”
Again to which the 2nd says “no.”
There is no doubt the 2nd is unreasonable and unfair.
Any honest ref watching will call a foul on the 2nd. And anyone who defends the 2nd is foul.
It’s not debatable.
Power is the end-all, be-all for activists on the polarities. Always has been. They don’t care about the downstream societal effects of dehumanizing rhetoric as long as when the dust settles, they're the ones setting the agenda.