Perhaps I am reading far too much into it, but when President Biden claimed that the Second Amendment was not a deterrent to domestic tyranny because the government has jets and nukes, I believe the political establishment was signaling that they do not fear the consequences of any actions they take.

I think this dovetails beautifully in with the fact that the political establishment doesn't even try to hide its actions or its contempt for the American people, and hasn't in years. How many Biden supporters are now Tweeting about how Biden lied about eliminating energy sector jobs, or lied about relieving student debt, and are now angry that they voted for him? If the political establishment is even remotely concerned about this backlash, they have yet to show it.

They don't care about the optics of a Lori Lightfoot or Nancy Pelosi getting their hair done while the rest of us were strictly prohibited from doing so. They don't care about the optics of Gavin Newsome throwing a maskless dinner party at the French Laundry while other restaurants were shut down They don't care about Lori Lightfoot waiting until after her appearance at Lollapalooza to reinstall mask mandates; same for DC mayor Muriel Bowser waiting until after her photo op with Dave Chapelle to do the same. They don't care of Texas Democrats board a private plane maskless and proudly share photos of doing so. Nor do they care that Barack Obama threw a lavish birthday affair with hundreds of attendees and staff, even though it - like the Texas Democrats - led to a COVID outbreak.

THEY DON'T CARE WHAT YOU THINK.

The will of the American people means NOTHING to them. And frankly, I keep saying "political establishment," because I sincerely don't think the Republicans care either. If they did, they would DO SOMETHING, instead of sitting on their hands. Both sides know that the majority of their constituent base will NEVER vote for the other side, so they can do whatever they want and have no fear of losing your vote.

What do you think of that? Your rich masters completely indifferent to your anger?

@Alysandir

I can hear Franklin saying: What are you waiting for? Declare independence. Are you going to just sit there and take it up the ass?

The catch: you're (right and center) both the baddies (love Mitchell and Webb).

"Everyone that doesn't think like me is wrong."

The political Left has come a long way from classic liberalism, eh?

That might be a good way to look at it, but I think they keep seeing the skull in the mirror, it’ll take Joe awhile to figure this out and he’ll piss his pants - again.

@dd54

The left by disposition are overly prone to embrace their primitive instincts. A civilization requires a consciousness population and traits that haven't had time to evolve.

The road from naturalism to Marxism is short. It comes down to the rejection of the harsh but stable environment civilization requires in favour of the easy but unstable environment that we evolved for. The irony is that the Luxus civilization enables produces the opportunity to embrace naturalism.

@dd54

I started reading it and clearly the definitions offered are not what I would expect. Where is Henry David Thoreau and especially Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Oh well I will read it and see.

@dd54

My suspicion is that even if you are highly intelligent your ability to rationalize the cultural norms and cope with cognitive dissonance has limitations. It's well known that intelligence is correlated with an ability to detect and adapt to shifting norms. At some point however complexity will overwhelm even the most sophisticated reductionist solution.

Up to this point in the history of the enlightenment reductionism has been amazingly effective. After awhile however unintended consequences compound. For example physics lead to nuclear weapons which lead to nuclear power but because the technology was developed for military purposes it's not fit for purpose in the civilian application. Instead of dealing with the complexity of untangling what went wrong we just move on to the next technology which will come with it's own unintended consequences. We see this with wind generators and a grid not designed to accommodate them. The same is true of electric vehicles, the grid can't handle the energy density demands of a revolutionary transportation system.

Naturalism has always been an attempt to avoid the reality of complex chaotic systems. The hop from Rousseau to Marx was predictable. Marx hide his naturalistic inclination behind the language of economic "science". Having lived a fast and unconscientious life himself, illustrated by poor work habits, parasitism on family and friends, destructive personal relations, and fantasy he created a fantasy social system to justify his short comings. More recently the 60s saw a resurgence of naturalism as demographics forced an irresponsible youth culture on society. The emotional instability of adolescent was adaptive in the easy but unstable environment we evolved for but disastrous in the harsh but stable environment civilization requires. Drugs and sex an escape from the challenges of a complex chaotic social structure humans cannot adapt to without something like religion to bridge the gap between the physical and narrative or abstract reality.

Naturalism has become an escape from abstract reality. If people are not conscientious then the naturalists use science to deny freewill. The unintended consequence was to strip people of agency and dignity. The idea that traditional social constructs such as freewill are not an evolved reality points to the lack of sophistication in our current intellectuals. They tend to adopt the same attitude towards abstract realities such as money. Since money isn't "real". the naturalist can't grasp that there is a long evolutionary history behind it that you tinker with at your peril. Abstractions such as money and freewill are part of the irreducible complexity of all evolved systems.

I'm not making an argument against reductionism. As a practical matter it's all we have and it has it's own complex evolutionary history. Science as it were is it's own social construct. What I'm objecting to is the sin of pride. It's especially dangerous in those intelligent enough to rationalize there political and social narrative.

Nothing illustrates the folly of naturalism more than to not predict it would result in the new religion of wokeness. If we can't come up with naturalistic solutions to complex social issues blame traditional institutions such as the police. You can't get to rational from an instinctual or emotional, naturalistic position. Instincts by definition are fixed and therefore irrational. The abstract realities of a complex social structure are the exact opposite. They are not fixed and are absolute because they are abstract like math they are rational even when they don't conform to physical reality. The fact that they are easily mutable is not evidence that they are not the result of a long cultural evolutionary process. Just as with math when you break the abstract rules cultural systems tend to lose their utility.

@dd54

I finished the article. It's a difficult read.

The claim that naturalism is a descendant of science it seems to me is only partially true. It underestimates the complexity of cultural evolution.

In any case it's too deep for me.

@dd54

We are forced to be philosophers by bad philosophy.

I have never been a big fan of philosophy. Most of the things we need to do are a matter of pragmatism. We have enough history for a general outline of how society needs to be structured. One of the things we learn from history is that social engineering always comes with unintended consequences. Recent history tells us that the progressives are careless. They have repeatedly failed to secure their AI systems. That pattern extends to politics.

The people currently in charge of our AI systems approach the world the way they would computer code. They profoundly underestimate complexity. The results of program code is highly predictable like any closed system. That is not the way life works. The physical world is chaotic, where the consequences of every action ripple through an open system. While some aspects of physical reality are reducible the behavior of the system as a whole is not. The recent pandemic is an example. Viruses are chaotic. They have evolved to rapidly evolve. Unlike computer code their RNA or DNA is prone to unpredictable replication errors.

When dealing with complex chaotic systems the worse sin is hubris or pride. Recently Joe Biden's performance in Afghanistan illustrates the gap between intention and result that careless social engineering leads to. The tech giants wanted someone they could control but got chaos as a side effect.