#Philosophy of politics

[thecurioustale]

We Are Seeing How a Pressure Campaign Works, and It Is Very Dirty

(I originally wrote this on Thursday but held off on posting it so as not to oversaturate my posting with political stuff. But it still nags at me each day, so I am finally posting it.)

[UPDATE: Immediately after posting this, I read on The Washington Post that Biden has just dropped out.]

Following up on yesterday's post, I want to point out and call attention to the pressure campaign to push President Biden out from his reelection bid, because I don't know how many people on here (or in the public generally) have the political acumen to recognize and understand what is happening, and this sort of phenomenon, though subtle, is critical to recognize and understand if one wishes to be good at analyzing and understanding the news—not just on this one subject but in general, especially news about politics and business.

Here's the short version: The drop-Biden faction is making a full-court press to get rid of him; they are dead-set on it; and their strategy is "Lie over and over again until it actually becomes true." The news has been full all month of conveniently-anonymous sources making claims that the drop-Biden faction is winning: that the Biden campaign is privately imploding, that more and more people in the Democratic Party establishment and other relevant circles are abandoning Biden and leaving him more isolated than ever, and that even Joe Biden himself is beginning to recognize that his candidacy is "untenable" and he might not be able to stay in the race.

Almost all of these anonymous claims were almost certainly lies at the time they were made, but (sometimes) became true later.

This is an important part of how a pressure campaign works: You try to redefine reality. You frame the opposing side's position as completely untenable with no way forward. You frame your targets as trapped and fatalistic, as if they are caught in a slow-motion train wreck and can see what is coming but are helpless to stop it. You assert that more and more people who are relevant to the matter are realizing and accepting this "reality" and getting on board with the "practical" alternative—which may be risky, yes, but is better than doing nothing. And you give cover to all of this, which is essentially a campaign of gaslighting and lies, by blanketing the discourse with public statements by prominent, relevant individuals who make the case for your side and put their faces and reputations behind it. Following the assassination attempt against Trump, the drop-Biden faction lost a lot of steam...until Representative Adam Schiff (who is extremely respected in Democratic politics and was basically a trump card for the drop-Biden faction) came out and said Biden should exit the race. It worked, and the issue flared back to life and has become more intense than ever in the past two days [Sunday update: and in the several days since].

In politics there is much that never goes public, but I have absolute confidence that, except with the possibility of the past several days, Joe Biden has been nothing less than categorically committed to running for reelection, and that he was telling the unconditional truth in saying so publicly. I think his reflective conversations with family and aides immediately following his performance in the debate ended with him reaffirming that position, and I think he has held that resolve until this most recent and acute phase of the crisis. Biden is not the kind of person who would have played it any other way. I think there was no fatalism and sense of resignation in the Biden campaign, no "slow-motion train wreck," none of it. I think Biden had made his decision to stay in, and the campaign was getting on with campaigning.

I want you to note that President Biden and his representatives keep saying that Biden is staying in the race. The drop-Biden faction keeps saying "The President has an important decision to make"; Biden says he's made it; and the drop-Biden people keep saying "The President has an important decision to make." In other words, for them there is only one correct decision, only one decision they are willing to accept.

Notably, very few of these anonymous claims of the Biden campaign's disintegration have been explicitly confirmed by named sources on-the-record. When you look only at the verifiable facts, it still looks like the drop-Biden faction is on the outside, trying to make hay out of a nonissue and not getting very far with it.

In other words, the Biden campaign wasn't going to unravel on its own. The drop-Biden faction is solely responsible for what is happening.

Pressure campaigns usually don't work, because it's usually very hard to unravel power centers from the outside. What makes this one different is that almost the Democratic Party leadership, the Democratic megadonor class, and (of all things) the mainstream news media all seem to be in on it. Their tactics are working because they have the firepower of the biggest fleet in the sea. When it came out today that Representative Jamie Raskin had written a private letter to Biden to urge him to drop out, for the first time I got the feeling that the drop-Biden faction is actually going to succeed. Apparently Joe Biden had the same reaction, because the latest news as I write this [on Thursday] is that he is reconsidering his commitment to staying in the race. [Sunday update: So far, this reporting has not panned out. The drop-Biden people are now saying that Monday is going to be the big day.] Raskin, Schiff, Pelosi...these are just about the most respectable names there are in Democratic politics. President Obama is reportedly in on it, too, though I've heard other reports that he's not. Numerous governors and senators are publicly in on it. Both Democratic leaders in Congress. Not even the president can repel firepower of that magnitude; it's exactly the sort of "expel-the-foreign-object" autoimmune response that we all so dearly hoped the GOP would have done to Donald Trump in 2015, or if nothing else in the aftermath of his defeat in 2020.

This isn't just the usual "Democrats hate to win" that I mentioned in my first essay. It is almost unthinkable that the entire leadership of a major political party in the US—the healthy major political party, no less—would be so quick in joining a cabal to expel its own sitting president in the July before the election—and seemingly on such a capricious basis! Joe Biden has not behaved meaningfully differently since the debate than he had been doing before. He's the same Biden! It wasn't anything that happened in the debate that caused this degree of galvanization within the Democratic establishment to occur. And it's not just that Biden is down in the polls; Democrats are routinely down in the polls the summer before a presidential election.

To give due consideration to the drop-Biden faction, there must be something else motivating them. Perhaps they have decisive evidence that Biden's cognitive abilities are much worse than is publicly apparent, though I would have a hard time accepting that based on my own witnessing of the President's public behavior in recent weeks. I don't care if he's slow up the stairs of Air Force One. I don't care if he doesn't immediately reocognize a longstanding acquaintance in a busy crowd. I don't care if he flubs his words or speaks quietly. Those things are not dementia; they are a part of aging and there is a difference. So are all these brilliant Democratic VIPs just that dumb? I have a hard time accepting that. So what else might it be?

Perhaps the fascist menace and the specter of a second Trump presidency spooked them like horses and they've lost rational control. Despite their smarts, their savvy, and their long years of experience, I can believe such a thing happening of them. This is something I've studied a lot over the years both as a student of human nature and to deepen the quality of my fiction-writing. Humans, even the best of us, can get caught up in a kind of mass hysteria sometimes. The Republicans are running a convicted felon who wants to end democracy (or rather pervert it to his own use, which is the same thing in practice) and yet is somehow clearly ahead in the polls. America feels like it is turning a corner into something dark and terrible, and both right-wing propaganda and now increasingly the mainstream traditional media are behaving in a way that insinuates that this might be acceptable and even desirable, and in any case is likely if not inevitable. I think they really might be spooked, in the sense of having gone collectively insane.

(Just a quick tangent here to say that Jake Tapper in particular, on CNN, has carried a LOT of water for the drop-Biden faction. I never liked his dour attitude to begin with, but I am disgusted by him after what I've seen in recent days.)

Another possibility is that perhaps this really is the rare conspiracy-coup to actually succeed, and now we are simply in the "snowball effect" stage where the political gravity has changed and everyone who wasn't part of the original conspiracy is just getting sucked into it by its sheer size and force as it rolls on down the news cycle.

And of course there are always a few Democratic stragglers down the ballot in tough reelection campaigns who care more about their own self-interest than anything else.

Whatever their motive(s), and to hearken back to my central thesis in the first essay, the drop-Biden faction lacks the confidence of its convictions. They do not have consensus, and they are not-so-secretly trying to push Kamala Harris off the ticket too. That's why they won't say her name as the obvious replacement when they call for Biden to exit; that's why they frame her natural replacement of Biden as a "coronation" i.e. undesirable; that's why they're calling for an "open primary" despite the fact that we already had a primary election and the formal nomination is in less than a month. And they don't have consensus on who the replacement should be; they are jockeying on this question as we speak. They are a conspiracy at war with itself—weak and self-serving and despicable. This is some surreal bullshit.

And it is incredibly dirty. This is dirty politics. This is party leaders and zillionaires overturning our vote as Democrats to choose Joe Biden to be our party's presidential nominee (and, implicitly, Kamala Harris to be his running mate), with no clear replacement in mind except "not Kamala." This is wrong, and it is fucked up.

And I'm going to tell you right now: It has probably cost us the election. We are probably going to lose because of this. If Joe Biden stays at the top of the ticket, he has been devastatingly damaged by this relentless summer pressure campaign against him. The nature of the supposed problem at the root of all this—Biden's age—is a genie that can't be put back in the bottle. Now that the entire nation has seen just about the entire Democratic party establishment panicking that Biden is not fit to be president, it is extremely difficult to imagine Biden winning this election.

But the thing is, Biden was by far our best shot at winning. He is a stronger candidate than people give him credit for. If he does step aside, Vice President Harris will also almost certainly lose, because she was always a weak candidate, because it's so damn late in the election cycle, and because America is a racist, sexist cesspool sometimes. If Harris takes Biden's place, our best hope is that Democratic messaging can successfully frame this debacle as "We listened to you, the people, and are giving you change: a young, vibrant candidate!" But it's a very, very long shot.

And if both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris get ousted by this cabal, then we are in the worst position of all, because millions of Democratic voters are going to feel betrayed and cut out—and from what I am hearing, this revulsion will be centered in some of the most critical Democratic constituencies, most notably the black community, which has largely been sticking with Biden through this and is well aware of the campaign to not only oust Joe Biden but also push out his black vice-president. [Sunday update: AOC came out and basically said the same thing: The drop-Biden faction wants to drop Harris too; behind the scenes they are fighting among themselves for power.)

Whatever happens, we are probably going to lose in November. Not just the presidency, but both houses of Congress. And I want you to know that the drop-Biden faction is to blame. Some of the best names in Democratic politics—people I still respect, though my respect for them has been firmly damaged by this

But more importantly, to get back to my main point tonight, I want you to recognize that this is what a large-scale pressure campaign looks like. "Lie until the lie becomes true." Is Joe Biden going to drop out? Everyone but Joe Biden keeps saying that he is, including the media (who really shouldn't be saying anything either way).

It's going to take me a long time to understand why this happened, if I ever do. And I also have new questions about the news media that I didn't have before. Jake Tapper on CNN has been the most glaring example of this, but it is media-wide: They've been pushing for this. They want this story to be the top story, and I get the sense that it's as much because of a desire to get rid of Biden as it is a matter of ratings and clicks. The Republican money and connections in the mainstream media want it for obvious reasons: It's the first story in years that distracts from Donald Trump, and it also happens to be just about the most damaging story imaginable for the Democrats. And the Democratic money and connections in the mainstream media seem to be an integral part of the drop-Biden faction, and why they want this to happen is still an open question for me, because from the outside this is like a self-inflicted mortal wound. These idiots have all but destroyed our chances in an existentially critical election.

This is so, so dirty. The Democratic Party, and the mainstream media, have both done America dirty. And I don't understand why they would take leave of their senses like this...but I sure don't like it. And this scenario actually runs afoul of my private list of Democratic Party yellow and red lines that would threaten my support for the party. We are well past the yellow line. You do not overturn elections, even if they are primary elections, so that some invisible back-room cabal can pick our new president and vice president. You just don't do it. We fought to put an end to these back-room dealings; the people should pick the nominees of their party. If neither Joe Biden nor Kamala Harris is on the ballot this November, I will have to have a serious think on what I will do.

Whatever does happen in November, the results-oriented thinking from the drop-Biden faction and their stooges in the media is going to be insufferable. If we lose with Biden at the top of the ticket, the drop-Biden faction will blame everyone but themselves, even though they themselves will have been by far the single biggest factor in weakening him as a candidate. If we lose with Harris at the top of the ticket, that same faction will say we should've had an open convention rather than defaulting to her, and again there will be no admission that the drop-Biden faction caused a series of events where she became the presidential nominee. If we win with Harris at the top of the ticket, the drop-Biden faction will say they were right all along to get Joe Biden off the ticket. And if we win with Biden at the top of the ticket, only in this one scenario will the drop-Biden faction be discredited in the way it so richly deserves to be. In every other scenario, history will be rewritten by the faction to glorify itself and erase the truth of what really happened.

I am quite upset about all this, really really upset, and as someone who mostly retired from news and politics a couple of years ago, I foresee a firmer and broader-reaching recommitment to that principle in my future after this election. For the first time I am finding myself seriously thinking about what will happen with a full Republican government next year. They are not happy thoughts.

It makes me wonder, "What was it all for?" Why does it even matter that I teach you how to recognize pressure campaigns in the news, if this is what America does with all its riches of knowledge?

Anyway, that's the last I'll say about any of this for the time being. For those with the energy to do so, please recognize that a cabal is trying to steal the election, and it is on our side.

[sailing-ever-west]

the trolley problem vs. systemic oppression: a comic.

[typhlonectes]

[the-cybersmith]

I think we're all being rather too blasé about the fact that most of the anglophonic population doesn't seem to believe in democracy.

I'm not using "believe in" as a synonym for "endorse", to be clear.

I mean the general sentiment is that the nominally democratic institutions of our societies do not represent the will of anyone but a small, ideologically captured elite who do not share our interests, and who do not respect the values important to us.

Democracy has been elevated to a near-sacred status. It is preached in th schools, and the voting booths, and the civic offices, and in the courts, and in the town halls, and in the hallowed halls of legislatures.

It is the value upon which our system of rule justifies and legitimises itself.

In some sense, it replaced the divine right of kings. That failed when people ceased to believe in God.

What happens to our modern civilisation when we no longer believe in democracy?

Neitzche saw the downfall of the old order in Apostasy.

A new Apostasy is upon us. An Apostasy fuelled by increasing evidence that the god of the public will is illusion, and that the heavenly throne of electoralism is empty.

We are carried forward by momentum, not fuel.

The world as it has been suffered a bevy of wounds, and soon it will bleed to death. I know not what will be born from the carrion of Democracy, but I think we are all being unreasonably calm about it.

[quote-bomber]

[kafkasapartment]

[liberatingreality]

The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it's conformity.

Rollo May

[queercodedangel]

"There must be something rotten in the very core of a social system which increases its wealth without diminishing its misery" - Karl Marx, New-York Tribune

[philosophybits]

Cold water added to cold water, makes no disturbance. Error added to error causes no jar. Selfishness and selfishness walk together in peace, because they are agreed; but when fire is brought in direct contact with water, when flaming truth grapples with some loathsome error, when the clear and sweet current of benevolence sets against the foul and bitter stream of selfishness, when mercy and humanity confront iron-hearted cruelty, and ignorant brutality, there cannot fail to be agitation and excitement.

Frederick Douglass, "The American Apocalypse (1861)"

[serpentface]

Faiza performing the Kagnoma Odo (pretty literally 'lion dance'), a weapons dance and one of the more important ritual duties of Odonii priestesses. A relatively new addition to this traditional dance involves the musket as the primary weapon, which is fired mid-twirl into the ground at the climax of the dance. Faiza is experiencing an 'oh fuck' moment because her shot is more than ideally diagonal, but she’s being so cool with it.

This is a wholly ceremonial performance at the onset of the pilgrimage, performed in full regalia and lion skin (of the small, semi-domesticated strain) but no armor. It’s also distinctly a display of political allegiance between the powerful and beloved Odonii priesthood (and its loyal military) with the increasingly reviled and destabilized imperial family, with Faiza prominently wearing a bracelet of the royal serpent, which was gifted (along with the musket) by the usoma Stavis Amanti himself (Usoma is the Wardi word for king, which has been retained in the context of emperors).

The Kagnoma Odo is the ultimate demonstration of the Odonii as an embodiment of the Lion Face of God and living vessel of military might and sovereignty, demonstrating her fitness and proficiency with weapons and as a spiritual unifier for soldiers. It is accompanied by drumming and occurs in stages, running through the three keymost weapons used in war- the spear, the sword, and the musket. The musket is of the most significance, given the weapon has developed a particular esteem as the ultimate embodiment of might and superiority. Assistants (almost always other priestesses, occasionally high ranking soldiers) load and prime the musket to be fired at the climax of the dance, where it is shot into the ground as the priestess leaps out of range of the shot. The firing signals the end of the dance and the rite itself.

While not the utmost exemplar of trigger discipline, only fully inducted and senior (and therefore very thoroughly trained) Odonii are permitted to perform the dance, and injuries during actual performances are quite rare (though are known to occur during training, more than a few Odonii have burns and wounds on their feet).

The most important renditions of this dance are performed upon declarations of war and before battles (in this case, generally done in full armor along with the lion pelt). It is also done during some trainings (while a dance, it is carefully choreographed to include naturalistic maneuvers of the weapons involved and helps soldiers limber up and learn to move their weapons). It is regarded as an impressive and motivating sight and a morale booster, and, seen at a distance, potentially intimidating to enemies.

A special variant of this dance is performed as means of fully incarnating the Odomache, which is done in full nudity with the body covered in the blood of the freshly sacrificed lion and cloaked in its raw pelt (the lion has become the corpse of Odomache in the moment of death, as part of its recreation of God's sacrifice). Her public, full nude appearance once (and only once) in this act is what allows the Lion Face of God to incarnate within her. Those in attendance see the spiritually vulnerable, naked human body obscured with the sanctified and deified blood and cloaked in the sanctified and deified skin. It is a merger of the contradictions of mortality and divinity, the boundaries between the two indistinct in flickering firelight and the flash of musketfire. She is witnessed by her people, dangling in between humanity and divinity and leading them in dance, and and is thus transformed.

[a-typical]

— On Palestine: Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé (2015)

[diaruchann]

Odysseus is stronger than me bc the moment a cyclops killed my best friend I would've dropped his "greet the world with opens arms" philosophy real quick

[weirdmageddon]

the original post i want everyone to see is way out of my hands now, so i’ll repost this again here as new but separate post. it touches on things i want to go into more depth about.

@wasabikitcat gets this idea. this reply—thank you so much for not just understanding what i was going for, but putting my exact thoughts into cleaner words on the bad reading comprehension site.

i can't believe how misunderstood my point was about “spirituality” (i didn’t know it was that much of a loaded phrase!), but thank you for putting what i meant into more nuanced terms.

it's something that can be hard for me to put into words, and maybe i gave people the wrong impression by using the word "spirituality", since words mean different things to different people. i just haven't seen people discussing it so i wasn't sure how to really put it. but regardless of terminology, this reply is exactly what i'm getting at. and this is coming from someone who has a very scientific mind. i wouldnt even consider myself a traditionally “spiritual” person in the normal connotation of the word.

edit: this one as well!

i see this as a cultural/political factor that we shouldn’t ignore, because this sense of meaning has driven people's motivations since the beginning of human civilization.

there's a primal aspect that hasn't really left us but there seems to be no room for it in our modern culture because half of these “guides” seem to be driven by “i cant wait for civilization to collapse so MY ideology can rise from the ashes" and the other half of it seems to be driven by greed. and often they are hand in hand.

i would really like to see actual enlightening ideas stemming from buddhist thought, analytical psychology, collective unconscious, and archetypes to take off in the public consciousness. (completely divorced from jordan peterson. just the original jungian stuff)

i am especially supportive towards getting people interested in carl jung's works. his idea was to get people to understand, "what myth am i living?" based on the same archetypes and symbols that recur time and time again throughout human history that we can all collectively recognize regardless of culture. so it's a sense of meaning based in the self. i don't want people being sent down reactionary paths when looking for meaning in their lives.

i think it would benefit people to who feel lost especially in uncertain/unprecedented times like, with those “there's got to be more to this, something deeper,” insinct. i see that people are looking for this but get taken advantage of or manipulated.

but on this deeper sense of meaning in life thing, the Left isn't doing a great job at providing an option for “lost” people looking for meaning that the Right seems to be having no trouble with. i wonder if this is why we've seen so many of these lost young men flock to reactionary commentators?

this reminds me of an excellent point contrapoints made in her video about jordan peterson, saying,

“The last thing I like is that you talk about deep shit. I was watching a video where you and a couple of zany goons were talking about Plato and Aristotle and the meaning of life. And I thought, ‘Huh… on the Left, we don’t really talk about that kind of thing. All we talk about is how society oppresses people.’ And that might not be enough. Because people need to have a positive purpose in life. I mean, personally, I don’t give a shit. I’m pretty happy to sit here watching the same three seasons of Strangers with Candy until I die. But other people, like Dostoevsky, Camus, other white guys who talk about lobsters…they have this need to have purpose in the face of suffering, and like, not just complain about patriarchy. I guess it’s easier to not complain about patriarchy when patriarchy isn’t the thing that’s making you suffer. But I do think that an education that only teaches people about oppression is inadequate. We spend four years teaching undergraduates why capitalism is bad, and then we say, ‘Well, you’re educated now. Good luck getting a job under capitalism, bye!’ …And that really kind of sucks! But you know, I think that’s a point that can probably be made without comparing transgender activism to Stalin.”

speaking of her, this is a related post i wrote earlier on young men being radicalized and how to approach communication

and by the way, if you are interested in learning jungian psychology and want to see what it’s about, here are some resources to get you started:

i think the jung subreddit has a great collection of resources on its about page.

i highly recommend Demystifying Jungian Psychology to start. it’s meant for beginners. it is available in english and spanish. you can currently find the book in the comments section here. since sometimes these links lead to a 404, i don’t want to link directly to the google drive page. i want you to have a link to the original thread in case it gets broken.

[typhlonectes]

[the-cybersmith]

All the wokescold lefty communists (such as @autisticexpression2 and probably @tanadrin) acting offended by this should shut their hypocritical mouths.

This is the world you made.

Or, to be more precise, this is the world you returned us to.

For most of history; stone, bronze, and iron age alike, this was normal and acceptable behaviour.

Until a few hundred years ago, this was the standard all over the planet except for a few places in Europe and Ethiopia.

The victorious warriors of a premodern conflict would select attractive young specimens from amongst the captured fighting men of a defeated enemy tribe and bring them home to be castrated and used for pleasure.

They all had different words for it, "thrall", "slave", etc... but it was essentially the same practice.

What put an end to this practice was the advent and spread of Universalist Christian Morality, or UCM. According to UCM, the victor was obliged to be merciful, and moderate, and restrained.

However, you got rid of UCM. You got rid of it because you found its rules inconvenient. Rules like "don't shoot your political opponent in the head whilst he's in the middle of a speech".

Well, congratulations. You have what you wanted. No more UCM. Just old-fashioned might makes right Nietzchean master morality (I think @loving-n0t-heyting can give a better explanation of this than I can) as far as the eye can see.

You openly bragged on X about how you were going to lock people up if you won. You said you would bankrupt Elon Musk, and take away his businesses. Well... you lost!

These soon-to-be catamites are combatants. They admit to being adults, to having voted. They are active participants in a campaign that would see men like Robert J. O'Neil disenfranchised and humiliated. They cannot claim innocence.

They would have sent him and his friends to dei training sessions and sexism awareness lessons. They would have taxed him, and locked up his heroes, and censored him on social media.

If they won.

Instead, they lost.

And now, like many losers throughout history, they shall be subject to the unrestained whims of those who defeated them.

Harry Sisson should take some progesterone, put on a dress, and report for Harem duty.

He's a concubine now.

[itsbansheebitch]

My Hot Take for the Day

After the James Somerton situation, the SWOOP exposes Johnny Silvestri in the Colleen Ballinger situation, and other videos where youtubers do serious investigative work, I feel like some of these youtubers should be recognized for their efforts.

SWOOP has already been on multiple news outlits for her youtube videos, why don't we give these people more recognition?

I can already name some people that should, I don't know, get an award for investigative journalism or something

Coffeezilla (Specifically regarding his SBF & Save The Kids Crypto scam series)

SWOOP (The Colleen Ballinger series, specifically)

Hbomberguy (For the Plagiarism, Roblox, vaccines, and climate change videos specifically)

Philosophy Tube (specifically for the vaccine video, that was an awesome study)

FriendlyJordies (Got his house fire bombed when he investigated Australia's government & many more people & organizations)

This is a starting list, but please, feel free to add to the list, we need to give these people more recognition!

I don't know the best way to formally recognize youtubers for investigative journalism, but I do know these are some people you should take seriously. Their work is unmatched.