The Philosophers

Trump mostly represents normal people being fed up with being lectured by the very people that ruin their lives, towns, states, country, and planet. In this sense, at least, he represents me. He is the most dignified and honest representative politician I ever saw.

:laughing:

I don’t know who it was doing the talking here but that is one of the saddest statements I’ve heard lately.

I voted for this lesser-of-two evils and wish that I hadn’t voted at all, which isn’t me.

Define dignified?
Define honest?

He’s a demagogue!

I pity you. Its great to have Trump. You should not be seduced into feeling bad about a human running your nation for a chance, Arc.

you wouldnt happen to read mainstream media, would you???

Trump uses the means of the people… this makes him a demagogue in the eyes of elitist. Yes, we know this. But are you elitist, Arc?

Compassion might be a better word to use.
Define human.
Would you like to have him? Take him.

Do I listen to the news? Yes, I do. But I also read him, I listen to his so-called rhetoric. I see his narcissism and his insecurities. I do not trust him. Thankfully, hopefully, he will not run this country as he did his own businesses.
He’s like a fascist.
Do I have a bias against? I sure do but I also see that he is not good for this country…only for a chosen few.

No, I am not. I am rather surprised that you would have to ask me that question.

I cant even begin to imagine why someone with a heart would think of Trump as bad. I only see fascistic media and idiotic beliebers lying and crying, for the rest I just see Trump making miracles happen domestically and abroad to save mankind.

Defeating isis, repealing Obamacare, getting out of tpp, just a few world class savior acts he pulls off in the first year. But there is so much more that he does that is better than I ever expected Americans to be capable of doing, politically.

Trump began a process of healing, but the disease is close to terminal already. If he can bring the debt down somehow that would be most useful. But the Fed Reserve always retains the ability to crash the economy at moment notice, which power they have acquired since 2008 by loading up their balance sheets with over 4 trillion dollars (almost 1/4 the whole GDP) of bad debts. If they start selling those debts, it’s all over.

I don’t know if they would use that as a threat or not. But I wouldn’t put anything past them.

Regardless, the disease was so massive that the healing simply had to start, somewhere, anywhere. Doing nothing (electing The Shill) was not an option. And the deep earthy wisdom of Americans understood this.

And the Federal Reserve is run by…???

The Fed Reserve is a private company owned by the major US banks, with its governors being appointed by the president and confirmed by the senate.

Alan Greenspan, Ben (Shalom) Bernanke, and Janet Yellen being…?

I’ve already addressed that issue. More than once. Now you need to tailor your comment to what I’ve already said on the subject.

You haven’t addressed a damn thing.

None of that is a done deal as of yet, Jakob. He hasn’t defeatest isis. Also, is it he alone who would be defeating isis?
About Obamacare? What would he do but rush in where angels fear to tred. I agree that health care needs changing but what does he want to do? Swoop in like a terrible tsunami and wipe people out, healthwise. I do not trust him, the way he operates.

I think that you have some Halo Effect going on, Jakob.
He is not the Savior of the World. On the other hand…

I didn’t say that he was all bad. Most people are not all bad ~ most. But I do not intuit that he is good for this country. Pay very close attention to him, the things which he says and the things which he doesn’t say. They are not in good harmony ~~ for me.
Franklin Roosevelt used to have his fireside chats.
He has his so-called tweets. How harmonious are they? How deserving of the office of the President of the United States?
Has he ever been called on the carpet so to speak for his actions and reactions on twitter?
Do you think that it would behoove lol the P of the US to be rational and balanced when it comes to his tweeting albeit he is a human being – but still, could he not exercise intelligence and walk away?
How much better in a person’s eyes he might at least appear to be, instead of being no different than many who rant?
Does he have carte blanche when it comes to tweeting?
Ought he to say the first thing which comes to his mind, because he has felt insulted?
Ought the P of the US fight back verbally when insulted or do you think that he must exercise some form, some kind of civility?
After all, he is not admonishing or insulting one of his employees from the past.
Where is the intelligence and decorum when it comes to the way in which he relates to many people?

I don’t know if he can in reality be dangerous but the way he exericses his right to speak to people can sometime in the future make for danger.
Behavior in one venue I think carries over to behavior in other venues.

Trump is the first non-fascist, non genocidal president you’ve had for at least half of a century.

But he uses twitter.

:astonished:

I can’t even begin to argue with you, Arc. The lives Trump is responsible for bettering already count in the billions.

Its fine by me if you don’t see this. But your life has been drastically improved as well.

Arc - this applies in my world just as acutely as your own standards apply in yours.
If you can read this without giving in to the impulse of wanting to “correct” me here, then you will be able to better understand my position - without taking it, of course, without sharing it. I do not expect nor desire that - it is impossible. It would be a miracle just for you to understand the basics of the standards Nietzsche describes below.

I can assure you that this applies in my world with perfect consistency, and always has.

"A great man — a man whom nature has constructed and in-
vented in the grand style — what is he?

First: there is a long logic in all of his activity, hard to survey
because of its length, and consequently misleading; he has the
ability to extend his will across great stretches of his life and to
despise and reject everything petty about him, including even
the fairest, “divnest” things in the world.

Secondly: he is colder, harder, less hesitating, and without
fear of “opinion”; he lacks the virtues that accompany respect
and “respectability,” and altogether everything that is part of the
“virtue of the herd.” If he cannot lead, he goes alone; then it
can happen that he may snarl at some things he meets on his way.

Third: he wants no “sympathetic” heart, but servants, tools;
in his intercourse with men he is always intent on making some-
thing out of them. He knows he is incommunicable: he finds it
tasteless to be familiar; and when one thinks he is, he usually is
not. When not speaking to himself, he wears a mask. He rather
lies than tells the truth: it requires more spirit and will.*’ 1 There is
a solitude within him that is inaccessible to praise or blame, his
own justice that is beyond appeal." [Nietzsche, The Will to Power]

Mind you, this is not meant as a description of Trump. It is a description of a type of man that may hep you understand why Trump is being valued over all the other US leaders before him. Trump is a step in the right direction.

Fixed Cross

Perception is everything. This I am aware of. You do not see his fascist leanings?
I will take a better look if you will. But… :evilfun:
As I said, I did vote for him but I see no real changes but many grandiose statements/promises.
But Rome wasn’t built in a day.

If you place a particular vowel and a consonant before the word uses Jakob, you might be more on the mark.

.

Sure you could but you would win insofar as arguing goes but not convince me otherwise ~~ since you are a far better opponent than I am.
But do you want to know something? I would love nothing better than to be convinced of his effectiveness in actually making America great again.

What have you been drinking, Jakob, and I ask you this with affection.
Show me where so I don’t think that this is just so much propaganda.

I think that there is a halo effect going on there.
My life is just as it was before he became president.
But please tell me ~~in what way has my life changed. I do not see it at least not as yet.

This might appear to be your projection, Jakob, but I’ve been known to be wrong and that is not coming to you as an insult, not at all.
But I really do think that there is a strong halo effect going on with regards to how you view him.
But don’t worry about it. We all have them but we have to see them.

So I do not see most of this pertaining to him but certainly some does lol . … probably more to you.
But I am curious about what the historians will have to say about him when the time comes. I only hope that it is far better than what I intuit. i realize that I am more than a bit biased here but who is it who sees more realistically, the one who has the halo effect or the one who might be a bit biased? That question does not pertain to just you and me. Perhaps they are simply the opposite side of the coin. Who knows?
But let’s not count our chickens before they are hatched and let’s not put the cart before the horse.

lol What?! Has Trump written a book called Notes to Myself (an actual title of a book) and have you been reading it?
You would first have to prove a statement like that, Jakob and who is it that would do this valuing of yours at this stage of the game?
Don’t people have to prove their selves first?
Is that from one of those so-called polls which would favor him? It would certainly have to be at this stage of the game.
You can’t see the bit of hero worship going on here?

You have me all wrong. I am far too cynical about human nature to have human heroes.
I see in trump the first somewhat honest, somewhat transparent, somewhat human US leader of my time.

I think it is rather the halo-effect of the previous leaderships that has you fooled.

They were all absolute monsters, and yet they were presented as humans, and people voted for them and let them do their monstrous business while talking about them as if they were any less horrible than Hitler. That to me is the halo effect which Trump breaks.

Anyone who liked Hillary Clinton is, and I mean this literally, easily as deluded as anyone who liked Hitler. But the same to an extent goes for Obama, and Bush, and Clinton, and Bush – not to speak of the ones that came before. All of these folks are mass murderers. Thats no reason to dismiss the USA, or the West, but it is a reason to rejoice in a more honest and human type of leadership.

Humans will always be offensive to humans. That is why ultra sensitive humans vote for robots like Clinton and Obama, who do their killing with a big grin and tell you its all for the good of mankind.

People actually believe that Obama did al his mass murdering for some moral purpose. That is the halo effect. That is the hero worship. Obama and Clinton fans are literally exactly the same as Hitler fans. That is the halo effect. Trump has no halo, he is crude, like the USA is at heart. He doesn’t have it in hi to pretend he is something he is not. The US is being revealed to itself. That is what hurts you about Trump - you are being made to see yourself as an American.

Americans are being made to see that their country is not some moral vanguard, but a human all too human power that has to make a decision about whether or not it likes itself. Trump shows you for what you are. Take it or leave it.

:-"

If you have real rouble seeing my perspective, just take a look at the viciously obscene cowardice of so many people on this site, and realize that this is a kind of running standard for politically motivated humanity - it is all entirely subhuman. In this subterranean climate of behaviour, this absolutely ugly standard of comportment that people like Wendy and Joker represent, the absolute cowardice and leechery of it amidst all of that, a leader like Trump is pure deliverance. An actual human.

Humans are not exalted beings, but they are better than Clintons or Obamas, Ottos and Autsiders, better than the memetic froth on genetic waste that these trolls represent.

Absolutely, yes.

This is excellent stuff. Trump is indeed the rightful representative of America, the true face of the US. I’ve disliked the US since my adolescence, and therefore also dislike Trump; Fixed Cross has loved it since childhood, and therefore also loves Trump.

Last night I was in a heightened state and wrote something in English again, against my resolution–something philosophical, that is. I will post it here in honour of the Philosophers and also because it may be fitting in this context.

::

Philosophical supremacism is the claim that philosophers rank above all other men, or that philosophy ranks above all other–activities. Now this has always been widely considered insane–consider Glaucon’s response to Socrates’ idea of the philosopher kings in Plato’s Republic–, and even in modern times it will be considered so. For to a modern, philosophy or science only has value insofar as it improves the people’s life. But one need not be a modern or even a Platonist to find grave problem with the claim. For there is an inner, analytic inconsistency to it.

Philosophical supremacism is concerned with rank. Rank however is not the subject of philosophy as such, but only of political philosophy. That is to say, it’s not the subject of natural, but only of moral philosophy, not of physics or metaphysics but only of ethics, at most of religious philosophy but not of “first philosophy”–philosophy proper, “philosophical” philosophy. This means that philosophy proper cannot claim a higher rank than any other activity.

The philosophers proper, however,–the genuine or actual philosophers–are those who lay claim to a highest form or way of human life, a virtuous life or person. To claim this about the (meta)physician is inconsistent, as we have seen. But is claiming it for the political philosopher not circular and thereby absurd? “The highest man is he who commands and legislates as a statesman, a moralist or a prophet that his kind of life is considered the highest.” He will then have to do so as a rhetorician, a play actor, an inspired poet: his self-expression, not what is expressed is then the focus: it is only the shadow play suggestive of the blaze behind it.

In the case of moral philosophy, that blaze is the blaze of natural philosophy: the impassioned conviction that every part of nature, as a manifestation of the whole or the nature of nature, is divinely glorious to see in truth. On some level, be it only the microscopic, science and divine service are one. Sublime patterns are found that fill us with awe. But the microscopic and telescopic are in a sense different planes from our natural, human-scaled one. In this sense, science is an escape. The greatest challenge lies in what is seen with the naked eye and the naked mind. This is the level on which dust is dust and fire is fire. The level on which virtue or virility banishes filth into nooks and crannies. On this level, the divine itself is ranked into high and low–even into divine and non-divine, even demonic.

::

The level on which dust is dust and fire is fire is also the level on which worms are worms (as per another of FC’s most recent posts). I was actually thinking of worms around when I wrote “filth” and, then, “dust”. I also thought of the brain of the leech (Zarathustra part 4) and of gnats’ anuses (Aristophanes’ Clouds).

Here’s something else I wrote today: “Tastism: the view that there is such a thing as good and bad taste.” I may be a Cato to Trump’s “Caesar”, but I do assert that an objectively higher taste and tastefulness can only arise out of the consistent assertion of some irrational and arbitrary taste.

“Voegelin seems to believe that ‘post-constitutional’ rule is not per se inferior to ‘constitutional’ rule. But is not ‘post-constitutional’ rule justified by necessity or, as Voegelin says, by ‘historical necessity’? And is not the necessary essentially inferior to the noble or to what is choiceworthy for its own sake? Necessity excuses: what is justified by necessity is in need of excuse. The Caesar, as Voegelin conceives of him, is ‘the avenger of the misdeeds of a corrupt people.’ Caesarism is then essentially related to a corrupt people, to a low level of political life, to a decline of society. It presupposes the decline, if not the extinction, of civic virtue or of public spirit, and it necessarily perpetuates that condition. Caesarism belongs to a degraded society, and it thrives on its degradation. Caesarism is just, whereas tyranny is unjust. But Caesarism is just in the way in which deserved punishment is just. It is as little choiceworthy for its own sake as is deserved punishment. Cato refused to see what his time demanded because he saw too clearly the degraded and degrading character of what his time demanded. It is much more important to realize the low level of Caesarism (for, to repeat, Caesarism cannot be divorced from the society which deserves Caesarism) than to realize that under certain conditions Caesarism is necessary and hence legitimate.” (Strauss, “Restatement on Xenophon’s Hiero”.)

With this ad hoc “signature” quote I will return to my self-imposed exile from English in philosophicis.

=D> And you, the ego-maniac, self-deceiving, drug addict who can’t face his mental illness who fucks black whores with ketamine up their asses and brags about it while some lame sock puppet on ILP are of a high standard, more valuable, than the average American, like Joker and I who deal with our families, don’t flee from our countries, and fuck each other legally while sober, we are ugly since we reject a greedy, religious conspiracy. Yes, you are the epitome of sound judgement. :laughing: You keep bringing up my name, desiring my attention being the sick fuck you are and now you have it crazypants! Was the chick you took the photo of and posted in the rant house the Islamic girl you knocked up?

Only a low life would use a girl, without her consent, for some sleazy photo-op proof of having sexual affairs. =D> Good job dumdum!

That’s his Muslim girlfriend, eh? :laughing: