Availing myself of Trump victory etc. to destroy democrats.

Sauwelios · December 11, 2016, 9:21pm

Last morning before going to bed (I work nightshifts), I wrote and posted the following comment in a Vox Facebook discussion that was in my news feed (because a “friend” of mine had posted in it). The discussion had been there for over twenty hours, but now the subdiscussion in which I posted it has gone! I wonder what happened while I was asleep. Anyway, here’s the comment:

::

Sam, “accept[ing] that significant portions of our societies are voluntarily dumb racist shit bags” means accepting that democracy is a bad idea. In fact, even if the dumbness is not voluntary (willful), that’s what it means. For then those who aren’t dumb must try to educate the dumb to smartness as far as possible; but this means treating them as children, i.e., minors, i.e., unfit to vote. And insofar as such education is not possible, it also means treating them as unfit to vote, for then it means treating them as mentally challenged. But you said “voluntarily”. If the dumbness is voluntary, then it cannot itself be dumb, for if the will by which the willfully dumb will themselves to be dumb is itself dumb, the dumbness is involuntary after all. As Nietzsche said, “[t]he stupidity of the good is unfathomably shrewd.” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra III, “On Old and New Tablets” 26, Kaufmann translation.) The greatest danger for all of man’s future lies in those who say and feel in their hearts that they already know what is good and just, and that they have it, too (ibid., paraphrase). Nietzsche the anti-democrat is usually considered a proto-fascist, but it’s really democracy which is proto-fascist. As a great Nietzschean once said, we Nietzscheans are the Jews of today. Political philosophy has always been about persuading the would-be Hitlers to protect rather than destroy the “eternal Jews”, the geniuses, the artists and philosophers and saints. How to persuade them of that? By demonstrating to them that it’s in their own best interest to do so. Demonstration is not rhetoric. Rhetoric is the specialty of the Thrasymachuses, not of the Socrateses. The specialty of the Socrateses is demonstration. But the success, first of Platonism (Christianity) and then of Cartesianism (modern science), means that public opinion is now strongly opposed to lies (thus America preferred Trump’s blatant lies over Clinton’s feigned sincerity). Therefore we Nietzscheans must now explicate the painful truth. Parental advisory! But it’s still a lyre from which we shoot our arrows. It’s possible to acquire a taste for the truth. One just needs courage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK4Q7SVY1-E

Sauwelios · December 15, 2016, 5:31pm

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/15/13966872/trump-lying-daily-show

Sauwelios · December 15, 2016, 8:15pm

My response to the article on Facebook:

Pretty good, except for the conclusion. I mean, sure, some are still like, “Wow, it’s magic”, but you’re deceiving yourselves if you tell yourselves that’s why he got elected. It’s rather because many people now prefer honesty about lying over dishonesty about it! Remember how distrusted Hillary was. She wasn’t honest about lying! Now of course that might be because she wasn’t lying in the first place, but many people didn’t believe that. I remember an interview with people in the street at the time Bill Clinton had just admitted to having had sexual relations with “that woman” after all, and one young woman said: “It’s not the sex; it’s the lying [that bothers me].” That was Hillary’s husband! Now apply that same sentiment to lying itself, and you get: “It’s not so much the lying; it’s rather the lying about the lying”…

Sauwelios · December 16, 2016, 10:06pm

From the subthread I created by responding to that article:

I:

Open your eyes. Many people trust Trump significantly more than the establishment, even or especially after saying the things quoted above. And they’re not wrong. It’s not because they can’t admit to being “conned”. It’s you who’s being conned, and the con man is yourself. You have to believe you progressives are the “right-minded” ones, but democracy has spoken against you. There was no Reichstag fire and no brownshirt militia, and no laws were broken (by Trump; Hillary is another matter). So what are you gonna do? Cease being democrats, or accept that conservatives may have a point? I think truthfulness on this point would destroy you, so you’ll just be inconsistent instead. It’s what liberals have always done: http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=181911

By the way, I’m no American, so I wasn’t “conned”, if that’s what you meant to suggest.

I:

When Obama was first elected, a Dutch expert on US politics explained that the Obama branch of the Democratic party was about as leftwing as the more rightwing branch of the Dutch political party CDA (Christian-Democratic (Roll) Call), which meant quite rightwing. Now in 2010, after having furnished the prime minister (minister-president) for eight years, the CDA suddenly lost heavily in the national elections. Then, whenever they were asked what they were going to do about it, they consistently replied: “What suits us [now] is modesty”–meaning that the people had spoken against them. I haven’t heard anything like that from the Democrats after Trump’s victory. Perhaps modesty is too much of a Christian virtue?

By the way, Bob [last name withheld], I noticed that you changed your last comment after I replied to it; this part wasn’t there before: “so the majority of Americans who bothered to vote didn’t buy the bs.” Sneaky…

Sauwelios · December 17, 2016, 11:14pm

From a thread on my own Facebook wall:

I:

One may want to consider the concept of anacyclosis: a tyrant in the narrow sense is a bad one-man ruler, in contradistinction to a king, who is a good one-man ruler. This can then be transferred to rule of the few and of the many: aristocracy is good rule of the few or rule of a good few, whereas oligarchy is bad rule of the few; and democracy is good rule of the many whereas ochlocracy is bad rule of the many. We may then say that oligarchy and ochlocracy are tyrannical whereas aristocracy and democracy are royal. The postmodern ochlocracy, a.k.a. fascism, is tyrannical in this broad sense. That tyranny is now returning, it has perhaps never really left; most obviously represented by Trump, Brexit, Wilders, etc., but perhaps even much more present in their obvious opponents and intrinsic to modern democracy in its very conception: consider the Terror of the French Revolution–the revolution whose fellest contemporary opponent was Maistre [… (]The Russian Revolution was more completely fascist than the French, because it led to the rule of a tyrannical Caesar, Stalin, whereas the French led to the rule of a royal Caesar, Napoleon.)

Fixed_Cross · December 17, 2016, 11:22pm

I have never seen any relation between Trump and tyranny or fascism or mob-rule. He is entirely rational, consistent and overt in his will, and his will is entirely rational with respect to what the USA has been set up as - a democratic Republic.

Trumps cabinet choices show a deep appreciation for perspective-diversity and a pragmatism unseen in US presidents. He picks from all sides, people with good track records.

The idea that Trump is fascist or represents fascism is, as far as Ive seen it the past year, 100% due to lies in the media.

I am not making rhetorics her, I have literally no idea how Trump is related to fascism or mob-ism or tyranny - he is in fact the first US president that appears to me an actual individual, a citizen who runs on his own personal merits, and by his own will power - one who has made so many friends during his life that he is able to rise to the top without fraud or deceit.

I dont think he has lied about anything that matters at all - Ive not caught him in a lie beyond the first stage of his campaign, and those were entirely irrelevant lies. But basically everything the popular media, facebook, yahoo, msn, cnn, nos, bbc, etc etc etc, write about him is pure fabrication.

Sauwelios · December 18, 2016, 3:09am

Fixed Cross:

I have never seen any relation between Trump and tyranny or fascism or mob-rule. He is entirely rational, consistent and overt in his will, and his will is entirely rational with respect to what the USA has been set up as - a democratic Republic.

Trumps cabinet choices show a deep appreciation for perspective-diversity and a pragmatism unseen in US presidents. He picks from all sides, people with good track records.

The idea that Trump is fascist or represents fascism is, as far as Ive seen it the past year, 100% due to lies in the media.

I am not making rhetorics her, I have literally no idea how Trump is related to fascism or mob-ism or tyranny - he is in fact the first US president that appears to me an actual individual, a citizen who runs on his own personal merits, and by his own will power - one who has made so many friends during his life that he is able to rise to the top without fraud or deceit.

I dont think he has lied about anything that matters at all - Ive not caught him in a lie beyond the first stage of his campaign, and those were entirely irrelevant lies. But basically everything the popular media, facebook, yahoo, msn, cnn, nos, bbc, etc etc etc, write about him is pure fabrication.

I’m not going to argue you on this. My posts in this thread so far represent how I have come to approach these matters from my perspective. When I say that the return of the postmodern ochlocracy, a.k.a. fascism, is most obviously represented by Trump, Brexit, Wilders, etc., I certainly also mean they are portrayed that way by “the popular media, facebook, yahoo, msn, cnn, nos, bbc”–though also that those can do so quite easily, that it’s obvious for them to do so.

As you know, I’m able to go quite far along with you on this, even when I’ve just spent time with our mutual technocratic friend, with whom I can also go quite far along on this. However, just as I don’t share his “progressive” values (at least not for their own sake, or as “objective” values or anything), the same goes for the value you seem to attach to democracy. Ortega y Gasset’s Revolt of the Masses, in which I’m about halfway now, has been quite an eye-opener for me (not that my eyes were closed before, but still). I now see both parties as grey, whereas you present Trump as shining white and his opponents as pitch black. Now his opponents may well be a significantly darker grey than Trump himself (for example, inasmuch as he represents a return from the ochlocratic Empire to a democratic Republic), but in my view both sides are very much pervaded by “the mass-man”. Anyway, as you can see I’ve been aiming my criticisms at his opponents lately. It reminds me of my position vis-a-vis Bill in the second half of the 2000s or so, when I would champion quite a Nazistic interpretation of Nietzsche to most of my (online) world, but would argue with him from a position that was liberal compared to his.

Here’s a video about which I wrote, about a day ago:

“This Ted talk may explain why philosophers, though being the most extreme possible liberals, have always tended to be politically conservative, or at least rightwing (i.e., pro social stratification).”

(I then followed it up with quotes that may seem to contradict this, each other, and themselves, so as to create a paradoxical whole.)

I find the video interesting and hope you’ll bear with for at least four minutes.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs41JrnGaxc[/youtube]
Jonathan Haidt: The moral roots of liberals and conservatives

Fixed_Cross · December 18, 2016, 6:03am

Just two quick notes before I watch the video:

I value the Electoral College - the mechanism that prevented the popular vote from prevailing over the vote of the States combined. A regional politics favoring not mobs but traditional communities. That to me is already antithetical to fascism.
Trump is neither Republican nor Democrat, both parties have reviled him equally, before he became the candidate; he is a man from outside that fake dichotomy. He’s voted for both in the past, like Faust.

Fixed_Cross · December 18, 2016, 6:09am

I see Trump as a man of the people, but of humans, not of sub- or quasi-humans.
As such, he is a first, to my knowledge. A first outside of Greece. A uniter of (City-)States against the Moloch. Themistocles.

Alternately, I see his victory as being of a Caesaric quality. I had not expected to see such a great master of politics in my lifetime.

I wont speak of his opponents, I can’t without being disgraceful. Trump is loyal to self-valuing very explicitly. I love him for that.

Fixed_Cross · December 18, 2016, 6:24am

This is my politics now: I said it, Trump did it. After his victory he went on to move in the exact directions Id be writing out on BTL a few days before I’d read it on the sites with factual information that also predicted his landslide victory in electoral seats - on which the race was focused, as it ever is.

Whether I see his acts in advance or not, I can’t fault Trump. It’s quite simply because he uses his resources wisely with a clear purpose that I too favor. Bismarck clearly comes to mind. He plays the same kind of pseudo-indifferent leverage-games as what I learned from that movie about “Der Otti”. All “erbarmelijk behagen” cracks into murderous rage.

It’s lovely though, the good English way. It happened through a Democracy, this is the amazing thing. l did not expect Democracy to be able to carry out such a superhuman process. I hail it, from Trump on.

Fixed_Cross · December 18, 2016, 6:35am

The Polis must be superhuman for the citizens to be able to be human.
Not the leader - he is a citizen among others.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-smetnW-k28[/youtube]

I find this worthy of a man serving a higher cause than himself. Opening by a man who serves that man - and serves him like a true knight.

Fixed_Cross · December 18, 2016, 6:37am

America is the Superman.

Fixed_Cross · December 18, 2016, 6:53am

As well as the Last Man.

This is why I see it so purely yes/no. There is nothing relative about their difference, they are actually fundamentally different types, irreconcilable.
(the movements, not all the individual voters - but on average yes, I think superhuman people are in the Trump camp in as far as they exist)

I’ll hide this out of discretion.

[tab][/tab]

of course everything can still go… sideways. If it does, we’ll get scenarios that will fall more easily into what I envisioned a lengthy proto-archaic pre-Homeric phase to be, the end of which far beyond our lifetimes, millennia.