Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
"...Perhaps laughter will then have formed an alliance with wisdom; perhaps only 'gay science' will remain."
User ID: 342
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
3d ago
More on Trump's tariffs.
I ran into a very interesting comment on reddit last night:
Trump's ICE thugs raided a roofing company in Washington State to arrest three dozen people.
I guess my 31 year old unemployed brother that weighs 400 pounds and plays Halo all day and occasionally destroys the plumbing and breaks the toilet seat and makes my 68 year old mother clean up the mess will just have to get out his tacking hammer and get busy.
MAGA.
To which I respond... yes. That's exactly right. Suppose ICE actually deports enough illegals to cause significant shortages in farming, roofing, factory work, construction, etc. Suppose that Trump's tariffs contract the economy to the point that lazy unemployed 20-30 year old men find it much more difficult to comfortably survive off their standard combination of day trading, intermittent gig work, and freeloading off their families. Suppose it gets to the point that their only option is to begin filling the vacancies left by the deportations. Isn't that just... wonderful? Isn't that exactly what Trump's base voted for? Isn't that, quite literally, how you make America great again?
The author of this comment would immediately answer with "well, he's so fat and lazy that he ain't gonna, so there". To which my response is, very well! Then we shall all go without roofs. Now of course, people are capable of far more than you expect them to be once their backs are actually up against the wall. People will leap into action if there's no other choice. But, supposing he's right and it does turn out that no one answers the call, then we shall simply go without. A nation, a culture, a race that does not provide for itself, should go without. This, I imagine, is one of the core ethical commitments that separates MAGA from its opponents.
Are we actually going to deport enough illegals to make a difference? Probably not. Is anyone in the administration consciously implementing the program I've described here? It may have occurred to someone in passing, but it's probably not written down in a secret master plan anywhere. But still, you can see here, dimly, the outline of a program that would actually give Trump's base exactly what they wanted, in a very direct way. Which is pretty neat.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
3d ago
· Edited 3d ago
You know, we were just talking a few posts downthread about how the "experts" are willing to blatantly lie in order to advance their ideological agenda.
We have been told repeatedly for years by the experts that making any sort of adjustment, pushing any buttons on the control panel at all, to the global trade system would lead to complete economic collapse, the rise of fascist dictators, the end of civilization, and in general all manner of untold horrors.
But why should we believe the experts? We know they're ideologically motivated liars. So, fuck it. Let's just start pushing buttons. Smash away and let's see what happens. If for no other reason to prove that you can do something different, alternatives are possible, even if you may indeed get burned.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
3d ago
· Edited 3d ago
A genuine recognition and acceptance of hard limits on our ambition. A point at which we let go, lift our foot off the gas, cease escalating and make peace. And not a hypothetical point in an indefinite future, or a point that we bend all available power against in an asymptotic approach, and not some tangential point off to the side divorced from the core aims of the project.
My interpretation of what you're saying here is "look, I can tell you in plain English exactly what I want. It's a very short and simple list of requests. And after I get what I want, I'll be out of your hair, you won't be hearing from me anymore. But these other guys, the communists, all they can say is that there will always be 'problems'. They can't tell me exactly what problems they intend to solve, or how they intend on solving them. So you never know what they're gonna do. Today everything could be fine, but tomorrow they could want something else, and then it's something else, and then something else, all because they found a new 'problem'. That makes them dangerous, because you don't know what they're gonna do from one minute to the next."
Do I have that right?
I will acknowledge that, yes, this is a feature of basically all the non-utopian Marxists. They think the future is fundamentally open. They don't know what's possible, what's impossible, or what will need to be done in the future. They don't claim to be capable of this kind of knowledge. (The utopian Marxists do claim to have this sort of knowledge, but we've already established that they have other problems).
I think however you can easily be a white nationalist while operating on a model that's basically like what you describe, with a more concrete list of demands. Mainly they just want to live in a country with other white people; it's really quite simple. There are many historical examples of 99% white countries. Just copy one of those, add on some extra immigration laws, and you're basically good, besides the continual ongoing maintenance that every state requires. You don't have to be Bismark with infinite will to power in order to be a white nationalist.
I'm curious what you would think of Keith Woods.
Does Zizek have room in his theories for loss? Does McGowan? Does Marcuse?
Yes! Dear God, yes!
For Lacan (one of the foundational reference points for Zizek and McGowan), the human subject is "constitutively lacking". There's a gaping hole that can never be filled, condemning us to the eternal samsara of desire. Unlike in Buddhism, he offers no escape from the wheel of desire, and unlike in Christianity, you can't fill the hole with God. The "primordial lost object which can never be found" was such an important concept for him that he invented a special name for it ("objet a") and called it "his one true contribution". This is not a mere footnote or aside. It's foundational to everything he thought.
Of course this position does not have universal assent among philosophers/leftists/Marxists/whatever. Deleuze & co. have a position that I think is much closer to the one you're criticizing. Deleuze thought that all desire was "positive" and "productive", and that we weren't fundamentally lacking anything. He thought that suicide was incoherent; "no organism kills itself of its own accord". The organism simply has a "bad encounter" with the bullet, or the ground, etc. This is a major point of disagreement between the Lacanians and Deleuzians.
It's funny that you used the word "loss" specifically, because this specific question has come up before in the canon of leftist philosophy. Derrida said that Hegel's (another one of the foundational reference points for Zizek and McGowan) dialectical system was incapable of conceiving of loss without recompense. McGowan pushed back and said Derrida was wrong, and that Hegel could conceive of loss without recompense. Any interpretation of an author or text can be challenged of course. There was a woman whose name completely escapes me now who wrote a critique of Hegel that went something like, yeah he can conceive of loss, I guess, but he can't conceive of super ultimate absolute loss, and in order to be able to accept super ultimate absolute loss we have to ditch Hegel entirely and go back to Kant. And so it goes, back and forth.
The point, regardless of who's correct in any of this, is that your enemies are already aware of all the points you raise. All of your concerns have been thought about, discussed, and debated in philosophical circles for almost a century now, and some of your enemies have even taken your concerns to heart. I mean, when Adorno and Horkheimer wrote Dialectic of Enlightenment, they had basically the same criticism of the Enlightenment that you have! It was the entire project of the book!
Dialectic of Enlightenment explores the socio-psychological status quo that had been responsible for what the Frankfurt School considered the failure of the Enlightenment. They argue that its failure culminated in the rise of Fascism, Stalinism, the culture industry and mass consumer capitalism. Rather than liberating humanity as the Enlightenment had promised, they argue it had resulted in the opposite: in totalitarianism, and new forms of barbarism and social domination.
They too recognized that something had gone horribly wrong with the Enlightenment, but they still wanted to see what could be salvaged of Marxism.
And even here, I've no doubt that you can construct some bespoke formulation that gives the appearance of limits or surrender, while retaining as much will-to-power as possible. But this, again, is in fact my point: "we know how to solve all our problems" is a lie, and lies are effective and often hard to detect.
If you've already decided that your opponents are lying, and your only job is to ferret out the lie, why even have a discussion at all?
The point is not to pencil-whip a checklist, but to recognize a predator that is actively working to conceal itself.
Perhaps this is another candidate for a formulation of the actual fundamental disagreement between us.
I don't look at political ideologies as "predatory". I look at them as social and historical realities. I look at them as concrete social organizations that different people may or may not be attracted to for different reasons. And yes, I look at them as abstract intellectual systems as well, whose study gives me a certain amount of pleasure. But I don't look at them as "predators". Not even wokeism, as much as I despise it.
Why bother looking for concealed predators when you already know that there are predators surrounding you on all sides? I am acutely aware of how many people from all quadrants of the political compass despise me, for various different reasons. When everyone's a predator, no one's a predator; or at least, when everyone's a predator, there's not much point in trying to distinguish predators from non-predators. I have no tribe, I'm an outcast everywhere. I am accustomed to the notion that my allies could betray me at any time. And this affords me a certain amount of flexibility in my outlook. I'll listen to what anyone has to say, but I'll also always keep one eye open as well, even with those who are ostensibly closest to me.
If you do have a tribe, whether it is called Red or some other name, whose support you can be relatively assured of, and from whom predators can be meaningfully and consistently distinguished, then it's unsurprising that this would lead to a fundamental difference in our outlooks.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
4d ago
For example, a "Christian" who believes that Christianity should be enforced by law, and children who don't seem likely to properly adhere to Christianity should be put to death before they reach the age of accountability to ensure their souls are not lost? Such a person also believes that "We know how to solve all our problems"
No, he doesn't. Not necessarily.
"We're going to enforce Christianity by law in order to build as spiritually pure a society as possible, but of course the battle against Satan and his works is never over and sin is impossible to entirely eliminate, people are going to keep sinning no matter what, so we must maintain constant vigilance lest we slip into a state of totally unconstrained decadence and chaos". Boom. Done. He still believes in problems. It's right there. And of course you can perform similar constructions with Marxists, white nationalists, etc.
With those caveats clearly stated, sure, fair enough.
For the record, what you listed are not caveats, but another position entirely.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
4d ago
"Material is all that exists[*], free will is an illusion, humans are machines that we can engineer to our liking"
If you can agree that the principle political distinction for you is between people who accept this statement and those who reject it, and your other formulations are (in your view) in some sense equivalent to or derived from this one, then I am content to let it be. I can at least understand how you would arrive at such a position.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
4d ago
Zizek doesn’t believe that he “knows how to solve all our problems”.
As a follower of Lacanian psychoanalysis, he believes that the fundamental nature of subjectivity will always lead to both social conflict and internal self-conflict regardless of how we arrange social relations.
His own idiosyncratic interpretation of Hegel’s “end of history” is that “the end of history is just realizing that there is no end of history; there is no final resolution of all contradiction”. Arguable whether Hegel actually meant that or not, but that’s what Zizek believes at any rate.
He has spoken at length about how Stalin’s mistake was thinking that he could transform himself into an impersonal agent of history and rationality; there is no ahistorical viewpoint from which you can judge yourself and your own actions, the outcome of your actions is never guaranteed, they can only be judged retroactively after they have unfolded in history.
Why, given these facts about his work and thought, do you persist in saying that “he thinks he knows how to solve all our problems”?
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
4d ago
you know your proposed comparison is not valid
No, I don't. I don't know why it's "not valid" because the criteria keeps changing.
"They think they know how to solve all our problems." -> I respond with "no they don't".
So the criteria changes to "they think they can engineer social relations using social institutions" -> I respond with "literally every ideology ever thinks they can do that".
So then the criteria changes to "they all share an underlying philosophical tradition" -> ok, what specifically about that tradition? What is the shared underlying philosophical principle? It can't just be "temporally, they were developed after 1800". That's not a good criteria for grouping ideologies together. I already suggested to FC that it might be a question of theism vs atheism, and he rejected that. I'm still waiting on an answer about whether it might be about materialism vs non-materialism, or something else.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
4d ago
remaining plenty ignorant about how a contested environment could pose any challenges to the implementation of such a social theory
What challenges is he not aware of? He's aware of the external challenges (plenty of historical examples of communist rebellions being put down before they took over the whole country). He's aware of the internal challenges (degenerating into a Stalinistic reign of terror). I mean dear God, his entire career has been dedicated to thinking about the many, many challenges that communism faces.
He seems to have a very particular (materialist etc.) social theory for precisely how to engineer our social relations [...] this certainly reads like "subjugating people wholesale" as "a form of manipulation by social institutions"
But this is so general that it describes virtually every ideology and political system ever. Civilization, as opposed to the anarchy of nature, is the imposition of social order. Civilization requires that people conform to a certain social order. Politics is the attempt to enforce a certain vision of that social order. That's just what politics is.
The Taliban have announced that Afghanistan will be remade in the image of sharia law. They have banned women and girls "from education, many jobs and most public spaces". They have a very particular social theory for precisely how to engineer social relations. They are subjugating people wholesale using social institutions. Are they thereby following an "Enlightenment" ideology? Is sharia law "the same as" communism?
Consider European feudalism. They too subjugated large swaths of people for the sake of engineering a certain vision of social relations, through the institution of serfdom. The social mobility of serfs was extremely restricted: they could not voluntarily leave their contract without their master's permission, and their children inherited the status of serfdom as well. In some ways feudalism was a consummate example of a "rationally planned" society; the clergy, nobility, and serfs were all viewed as having their own particular and necessary social role. So is feudalism an "Enlightenment" ideology? Is it the same as what the Taliban have going on with sharia, or is it different?
Obviously contemporary western democracies do not escape the basic fact that all civilizations must impose some kind of order. We too are bound by laws and social expectations.
This is not to say that all ideologies and systems are equally totalitarian of course. Some are clearly more totalitarian than others. But if the fundamental distinction that you and FC are concerned with here is "freedom vs totalitarianism" then you should just say so, instead of saying "yeah those guys have like, a list of goals they want to achieve, and they think they can make people do things". Well, duh. That's just politics.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
5d ago
Can you please elaborate?
FC has repeated multiple times that the principle criteria is “we know how to solve all our problems”. Zizek denies that we know how to solve all our problems. But you are claiming that his project still “counts”. Why?
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
5d ago
what you think the “Zizekian communist project” still is
Intentionally left somewhat vague, but my impression from listening to him and his close collaborators is that it’s something like: nationalization of industries, central economic planning, aggressive state action on issues like global warming, workplace democracy and employee co-ops, etc. The sorts of ultra-left economic policies that you’ve heard of before.
There’s still the hope that with enough fumbling about we’ll someday “transcend the social relations of capital”, although everyone has failed at specifying what this means concretely just as much as Marx himself did.
And yes, it could involve the use of revolution too. Although as I’ve already argued, revolution is a tactic that can be utilized or rejected by any ideology.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
5d ago
there is no solution, that there is no plan, that we are not in control of the world; all we control is ourselves; we make our choices and live with the consequences.
What I have reiterated over and over in these discussions for a year at this point is that believing in a "master plan" is not a necessary criteria of any of the political ideologies under discussion. You can be a Marxist and still believe that there is no plan, we are not in control of the world, etc. This is basically Zizek's whole schtick, if you listen to his lectures. It basically goes: "Yeah, Marxist revolutionaries at one point did believe that they were impersonal agents of history, simply carrying out what was rationally required, etc. We know now that was a mistake, a failure mode. That's how you get Stalinism. So that's been discredited. But we're still communists, we still believe in the communist project."
But does that make Zizek and his fellow travelers into allies of traditionalists? I don't think the traditionalists would agree. Which means that your belief in a master plan is not what fundamentally determines your political orientation.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
5d ago
I want to try to achieve an understanding of what the root of this disagreement is, on a deeper level. The Christianity hypothesis was one attempt at that. If you have an alternative read on the situation that's fine. I encourage you to share your own interpretation. Although I would point out that Hlynka said, directly, that belief or non-belief in God is part of "the core of what positions we hold".
I use similar logic to sort friend and enemy, and to make predictions about where current ideology will lead people, and this seems like an obviously useful and relatively uncontroversial method of reasoning.
If it's ultimately just about distinguishing "my friends" from "my enemies", then that's fine. I would have nothing further to add. But you should just say that, instead of arguing that vastly heterogeneous groups of people are committed to a complex web of philosophical assertions that they are not, in fact, committed to.
Eugenics was straightforwardly an attempt to reshape "human nature" through the mechanism of social institutions?
Well, through technology and biology. Not social institutions.
Unsurprisingly, materialists believe that human nature is grounded in some combination of biological/physical properties and environmental factors, because that's all there is. Humans are what they are because of what their made of. If you change what they're made of then you could (potentially) change what they're like. If this fundamental metaphysical commitment makes all materialists ideologically "the same" in some sense, then that lends further credence to the assertion that the fundamental divide for you is really about materialists vs non-materialists.
It should be noted though that materialists are not necessarily committed to the idea of an infinitely malleable human nature. There could be logical/physical constraints on the "space of all possible minds". The psychoanalysts believe that the necessary preconditions of subjectivity itself put certain constraints on any conscious mind that look a bit like the fall of man and original sin if you squint at it (Lacan, despite being an atheist, had a complex relationship with Christianity).
At any rate, there are non-materialist Christians among both the communists and the dissident right, rendering the whole line of questioning somewhat moot.
Do you understand that, completely separate from any charged keywords or references to specific identity groups, the core logic evident in that passage marks the author, to me, as the most mortal sort of ideological enemy? Someone with whom no cooperation is or likely ever will be possible?
I will ask directly: are all your enemies "the same" in some sense, just because they are your enemies? If not, then why is it relevant that Bismark sees you as an enemy? Why did you bring it up?
they believe they can sort people into the good and bad bins by population-level metrics, when in fact they absolutely cannot do that.
Is this the assertion of a new criteria for determining identity among ideologies? How is it related to the other proposed criteria ("humans as naturally good vs evil", "knowing how to solve all our problems vs not knowing", etc). Are they all equivalent formulations of each other? Is one of the formulations at the root, and the others are derived from it?
Would it be fair to say that they believe things will get a whole lot better, if they can simply remove most of the silly barriers keeping them from exercising unrestrained power to reshape and organize society?
Is there any set of circumstances that's better than any other set of circumstances for anyone, ever? Or is everything just all the same?
You have expressed a great deal of anger on this forum previously about what you see as Blue Tribe overreach and abuse of power. Would your life be better, in any way, even a little bit, if Blue Tribe had less power over you and the things you care about?
Because if you can imagine specific changes to society that would make your life even a little better, then we're just haggling over numbers at that point. Your proposed changes would only improve life by a modest 50 utils, so you're on the Red Tribe side, traditionalist, anti-Enlightenment, etc. But Yarvin thinks he can improve life by 300 utils, which is over the cutoff of 250, so he's on the Enlightenment side with all the Nazis and communists etc.
This is not tenable.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
6d ago
I’m not a Yudkowskian Rationalist. I’m an enemy of utilitarianism. I am in fact sympathetic to some of the critiques of the Enlightenment that these posters have laid out.
This is just about recognizing the distinctions between different ideologies that are in fact distinct. It’s not about anything else.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
6d ago
What do you think of the idea that I floated here? That the fundamental distinction for you and Hlynka, at the end of the day, is between Christians and non-Christians? Is there anything to that, or is it completely baseless?
Although not entirely central, references to religion do recur throughout posts made by you and Hlynka, such as the line I quoted from him, and your reference to "secular materialists" that you just quoted.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
6d ago
have more conservative sexual ethics than most on the DR(which in its most mainstream form endorses male promiscuity)
Ok, this may be at the root of some of the confusion around this topic. When I say "DR" I mean specifically the narrow white nationalist variant. These people by and large are quite conservative in terms of sexual ethics. Someone like Andrew Tate is not DR under this definition.
You can say that it's not fair to focus on such a relatively small group and ignore the diversity of alternative right-wing thought, which is a valid point, but the white nationalists are worth looking at in particular because they do provide a significant counterexample to Hlynka's arguments.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
6d ago
My position is that you can't properly characterize Hlynka's position if you don't address such a significant part of the position.
I of course want to represent Hlynka's arguments as clearly and accurately as possible. I just reread the three "Inferential Distance" posts. The most relevant section seems to be this from the first post:
Relatedly, I maintain that the left vs right spectrum are best understood as religious schism within the western enlightment, with the adhearants of Locke and Rousseau on one side and the adhearants of Hobbes on the other. The core points of disagreement being internal vs exterenal loci of control and the "default" state of man.
But this ignores the diversity of views about human nature you find on both the far right and the far left. The dissident right already has an essentially Hobbesian view of human nature, as far as I understand it. And even on the far left, things are not so clear. Followers of the more psychoanalytically-inflected strains of Marxism stress that there can be no final end to history, no ultimate reconciliation of the individual with the collective.
Further quoting Hlynka:
That is an underlying assumption on both sides that if only all the existing social barriers/contracts could be knocked down, utopia would be achievable.
This is straightforwardly false. The dissident right does not believe this.
And finally:
Users here will often argue that the existance (or non-existance) of "an imaginary sky-friend" or individual loci of control are not relevant to whatever issue is being discussed but I disagree. I believe that these base level assumptions end up becoming the core of what positions we hold.
I suspect that what he wanted to say, but shied away from, is that there are ultimately two camps: those who believe in the Christian God, and those who don't. This is undoubtedly the conclusion that one should draw if one starts from Christian priors. But since I reject Christian priors, I unsurprisingly reject the conclusion as well.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
6d ago
It was just a name for the position I quoted at the beginning of the post, nothing more. Sorry if there was any confusion.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
6d ago
The hole exists because the avoiders of the hole reject the underlying premise even when they are aware of it, if they are aware of it in the first place.
Can you explain what the Hobbesian premise is that's being rejected/forgotten?
Earlier you said:
whether humans are naturally good or evil, the nature of the locus of control as internal (individualist/person-centric) or external (you can change people and the world by taking and changing the institutions)
Is this it?
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
6d ago
I'm not exactly a fan of top-level posting denouncing the beliefs of someone who isn't permitted to clarify their position
All the more reason he should be brought back to defend himself!
But Hlynka's narrative had some pretty clear and specific keywords that you've not even raised.
Taking one of Hlynka's positions and using it as a synecdoche for "Hlynkaism" in toto is, indeed, an example of the very behavior I was criticizing, and for that I apologize. (In my defense, it was supposed to just be a cute moniker rather than an assertion of a serious philosophical claim.)
But it did seem to be one of his most critical recurring positions, it's the position that I've encountered most frequently in other conversations with posters here who claim to be carrying his mantle, and, crucially, it's the position that was outlined in the post I quoted from hydroacetylene. So that's what I wanted to respond to in my post. My post was only intended to respond to that position and not any of Hlynka's other positions.
Call it whatever you want- left or right, whether humans are naturally good or evil, the nature of the locus of control as internal (individualist/person-centric) or external (you can change people and the world by taking and changing the institutions)
But this isn't actually a good way of dividing up different ideologies. It's essentially a non sequitur. It's just something Hlynka latched onto because it seemed like a good way of putting all his enemies onto one side, while he got to stay on the other side.
It also just misrepresents the basic facts about what different groups believe, particularly in the DR. As HBD advocates, they believe in a relatively static human nature that cannot be reshaped by social institutions. Nor can their position be reduced to "white people inherently good, everyone else inherently bad"; they acknowledge that whites have a higher genetic disposition to violent crime than East Asians, for example, and that this would persist regardless of social arrangements.
That sort of rejection / non-recognition of the alternative enlightenment paradigms was / is one of the core tenets of Hlynkaism.
I believe that I'm quite capable of considering all relevant alternatives, but please let me know if I'm missing something.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
6d ago
And as a tactical choice it is itself a ideological commitment. It’s not merely ‘rapid change’- it requires an acceptance of top down impositions, rationalism, the idea of de novo societal shifts implemented by a vanguard party. I reject all of that ideologically.
You are right to point out that the distinction between tactics and principles is not as clean as I made it out to be. But I'm skeptical that recourse to revolution is always indicative of the deep ideological commitments that you portray it as having. Whatever it may entail ideologically, I don't think it's a good criteria for cleaving the global ideological space at the joints.
The American Revolution was, by most accounts, based on the principles of classical liberalism; principles that I imagine Hlynka and his fellow travelers would endorse wholeheartedly. Was there something ideologically objectionable about the American Revolution just because it took the form of a revolution? Does it have to be denounced? Were the founding fathers necessarily committed to a certain "top down rationalist" view of human nature that true Red Tribers would have to reject?
Or consider the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which instituted an Islamic theocracy. They certainly claim to be following a conservative tradition of some kind; it might not be your preferred tradition, but it's a tradition. Are they too committed to an Enlightenment rationalist view of human nature? Does Islamic theocracy share a deep philosophical affinity with Marxist communism that has hitherto gone unnoticed? And the American Revolution too?
The most reasonable conclusion, on my view, is not that revolutions are a result of people having a deep ideological commitment to the idea of a top down rationally organized society. Revolutions are a result of people wanting power, and having the means and opportunity to seize it. This is universal to left and right, old and new.
I agree with much of the DR that gays are perverts who shouldn’t be allowed near kids, that women shouldn’t vote, etc. But my reasoning and therefore implementation of these ideas is very different.
Would you be willing to elaborate on this? I'm just curious.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
6d ago
There appears to have been a mild resurgence of Hlynkaism on the forum. This is concerning, because I believe that the core tenets of Hlynkaism are deeply confused.
Fuck it I’m taking up the hlynka posting mantle- they’re the same thing. They’re both revolutionary ideologies calling for to radically remake society in a short period of time. They merely disagree about who gets cushy sinecures doing stupid bullshit(black lesbians or white men). The DR weirds out classical conservatives once they figure out it’s not a meme.
It's not entirely clear what's supposed to be the determining criteria of identity here. Are wokeism and the DR the same because they're both revolutionary, or are they the same because they only differ on who gets the cushy sinecures? At any rate, I'll address both points.
Revolution (defined in the most general sense as rapid dramatic change, as opposed to slow and gradual change) is a tactic, not an ideological principle. You can have adherents of two different ideologies who both agree on the necessity of revolution, and you can have two adherents of the same ideology who disagree on the viability of revolution as a tactic. Although Marxism is typically (and correctly) seen as a revolutionary ideology, there have been notable Marxists who denied the necessity of revolution for Marxism. They instead wanted to achieve communism through a series of gradual reforms using the existing democratic state apparatus. But does that suddenly make them into conservatives? Their tactics are different from typical Marxists, but their core underlying Marxist ideological principles are the same. I doubt that any of the Hlynkaists on this forum would look at the reformist-Marxists and say "ah, a fellow conservative-gradualist! Truly these are my people; they too are lovers of slow, cautious change".
"Tradition above all" is an empty formalism at best, and incoherent at worst. If tradition is your sole overriding source of moral truth, then we just wind up with the old Euthyphro dilemma: what happens when the tradition that you happened to be born into isn't worth defending? What if it's actively malicious? "Support tradition" is a formal principle because it makes no mention of the actual content of that tradition. If you are living in a Nazi or communist (or whatever your own personal avatar of evil is) regime whose roots extend back further than living memory, are conservatives obligated to support the existing "traditional" regime? Perhaps they're allowed to oppose it, but only if they do so in a slow and gradual manner. You can understand why this response might not be appealing to those who are being crushed under the boot of the regime. And at any rate, you can only arrive at the position of opposing the regime in the first place if you have an alternative source of substantive ethical principles that go beyond the formal principles of "support tradition" and "don't change things too fast".
As for the assertion that wokeism and the DR only differ on "who gets the cushy sinecures"; this is simply incorrect. They have multiple substantive policy disagreements on LGBT rights, traditional gender roles, immigration, foreign policy, etc.
Hlynkaism to me represents a concerning abdication of reflection and nuance, in favor of a self-assured "I know what's what, these radical Marxist-Islamo-fascists can't pull a fast one on me" attitude. This is emblematic of much that is wrong with contemporary (and historical as well) political discourse. The principle goal of philosophical reflection is to undermine the foundation of this self-assuredness. Actually, you don't know what's what. Your enemies might know things that you don't; their positions might be more complicated and nuanced than you originally thought. Undoubtedly the realm of political discourse would become more productive, or at least more pleasant, if this attitude of epistemic humility were to become more widespread.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
8d ago
Although there is variation in the opinions of individual mods, my impression of them as a group is that they certainly have no interest in enforcing an “HBD consensus” (in either direction).
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
8d ago
a choice between the rules as a credible institution or his continued participation
A third option is to enforce the rules, but not via permabans.
Permabans should be reserved for the most egregious trolls, spambots, or accounts that are otherwise doing harm to the forum in some way. The way I see it, there’s almost never a reason to permaban a good faith poster (which Hlynka obviously was). I would set the maximum suspension length somewhere in the range of 6-12 months.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
8d ago
I have consistently maintained that banning him was a mistake. Although he might be prideful enough that even if the invitation was extended, he wouldn’t come back.
I'm not wealthy wealthy, but I am significantly wealthier than the median American. I could drop to zero net income and live off my current wealth for years without having to work a day. And I feel no moral guilt about this whatsoever. So no, I have no envy/hatred of wealth.
I'm upset that our vital and necessary work is being done by immigrants and illegals instead of native-born American citizens.
If we get back to the point where the work of maintaining American society is again being done by Americans, and there's still enough surplus to go around to enable some people to live as NEETs, then fine by me. Bully for them. Being a NEET is great! I've done my share of NEETing in the past. I empathize fully with why people want to do that and I have no criticisms of them from a moral perspective.
There is no politics unless someone is being forced to conform to something. There is no civilization unless someone is being forced to conform to something.
Obviously some civilizations are much more totalitarian than others. But even the most libertarian among us will still usually support some minimal state order for the purposes of punishing violent crime, enforcing property rights, etc.
Incorrect, see above.
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