That is only because, unlike me, you are still convinced that the truth – the whole truth – embedded in “Communism: right or wrong?” is enscounced in the existence of moral and political facts that some are in sync with while others are not. My point is that the arguments from both sides are reasonable given the particular assumptions/premises made about the human condition. Embedded out in particular worlds historically, culturally and experientially.
In other words:
You are considerably more convinced that your take on Communism is much, much closer to whatever all rational men and women will be obligated to think about it if, one day, philosophers and ethicists and political scientists actually do pin this all down.
You keep saying this about me, but I don’t say that “all rational men and women will be obligated” to think about it one way. That’s just silly.
I also don’t say that in any disagreement, my opponents are right based on their assumptions and I am right based on my assumptions. That’s also silly. Their assumptions may be stupid and/or logic may be stupid. The same may be true of my assumption and/or my logic. Somebody could be wrong.
From my perspective this is basically a distinction without a difference. If folks don’t think about Communism as you do it is either because they are right to think about it as they do from their side, or because their assumptions and logic are “stupid”.
Okay, how then do the philosophers, ethicists and political scientists go about determining who is in fact wrong here? What does that argument sound like? Especially given that rules of behavior must be enacted in any given community either facilitating or retarding the actual political reality of Communism.
The day you’ll be able to say, “see, I told you”, and I will be left with no other viable option but to agree with that. The objective proof will actually be there!
You seem to care about that much more than I do.
I’m the one down in the hole. I’m the one who is fractured and fragmented. I’m the one on the precipice of oblivion.
Of course I care about it! Just as you are keenly intent on not having me yank you down into the hole with me.
I mean, come on, look what the fuck is at stake here!!
Okay, and if folks come into this exchange who still defend Communism, they will no doubt say the same thing about themselves in regard to the points they raise about capitalism.
But my frame of mind revolves around the assumption that individual motivations and intentions are embedded in the enormous gap between what “I” think I know about myself here and now and all that actually could be known about myself if I had access to all of the variables that went into creating “me” from the cradle to, well, “here and now”.
Again, it all depends on the extent to which one is able to convince oneself that “I” am in sync with the “real me” in sync with “the right thing to do”.
And then acknowledging that the closer one comes to believing this, the more likely they are able to attain and then sustain the sort of “comfort and consolation” that human psychological defense mechanisms were designed [by nature] to help us endure what can be a profoundly precarious and problematic life.
Well isn’t that general and abstract.
Indeed, and if we bring it all down to earth pertaining to a particular conflicting good in a particular context, I can describe the manner in which I am down in that hole fractured and fragmented.
While you are still able to congeal your “self” into a frame of mind that is nothing like this at all.
Right?
I make a personal claim to give due respect to truth and in reply you refer to some anonymous “folks” who allegedly do exactly the same things.
Huh? I merely point out obvious: that you have your “personal claim” regarding the truth about Communism, while others, utterly in conflict with you, have theirs.
Isn’t that in fact the truth regarding those on all sides of all the moral and political conflagrations that rend us?
“Due respect to the truth”? Nope, nothing subjective and subjunctive about that.
Bring forth an actual person so that we can examine his actions.
Okay, how about Don Trump? Note something that he does over the next few days and we can commence a discussion/debate regarding the extent to which we believe it either is or is not “the right thing to do”.
My guess: the “basis for evaluation” will revolve around the manner in which you come to interpret the significance of the facts.