Archives for posts with tag: MAGA

The Starting Point

August 23, 2025 //
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“Our measures do not tell us whether philosophy majors
go on to apply their newfound abilities in the service of truth and justice
or, conversely, for personal gain and glory.
Settling that question would require gathering a different kind of evidence.”

Reading it, https://theconversation.com/studying-philosophy-does-make-people-better-thinkers-according-to-new-research-on-more-than-600-000-college-grads-262681, brought back to memory another research subject. Linking a ‘reasonable consumption of alcohol’ to various health benefits.
A quick google search produced this:

The paper I found now, https://www.phcc.org.nz/briefing/glass-half-full-alcohols-health-benefits-cardiovascular-disease-still-controversial-and, is quite thorough.
More importantly, for me, it raises the points which bothered me when I first found out about the claim. On FB, more than five years ago.
I’ll put it in my own words.

Being able to drink for a relatively long time means one had a fairly strong health at the start of the whole process. And at least some degree of self-control.
Otherwise the drinker would have very soon become ill, an alcoholic, suffered some accidents… or any combination thereof.

Same thing regarding the findings of the first study.
Take a number of smart people. One has to be smart in order to be interested in philosophy! And able to graduate…
Train those people’s abilities. Help them develop whatever they’re good at. And like doing…
Then wonder about the good results you’ve achieved!

Writing this post made me realize that it goes far deeper than this.
No, this is not a self-congratulatory study. Far from it.
It’s stark warning!

“Public trust in higher education has hit record lows in recent years, according to polling by the Lumina Foundation and Gallup. Meanwhile, the rapid advance of generative AI has threatened the perceived value of a traditional college degree, as many previously vaunted white-collar skills are at risk of being automated.
Yet now more than ever, students must learn to think clearly and critically. AI promises efficiency, but its algorithms are only as good as the people who steer them and scrutinize their output.
The stakes are more than personal. Without citizens who can reason through complex issues and discern good information from bad, democracy and civic life are at risk.”

This paper is not about the virtues of learning!
It’s about us.
So many of us still have so much more to learn about the virtues of learning…

One possible explanation for what’s going on is that not enough of the learned people “go on to apply their newfound abilities in the service of truth and justice“.
Me starting this post with the distinct feeling that this was a self-congratulatory study is yet another confirmation of the generalized distrust which permeates the whole society.
We’ve reached that stage where we primarily look for reasons to refute.
Some say a little paranoia is good for you. That it keeps you safe.
I’m afraid we’ve reached exactly where ‘they’ want us to be.
Distrusting, paranoiac people cannot do anything together.

Constantly looking over your shoulder will never lead you forward.
Will only make you, us, susceptible to manipulation.
Remember, in this context, how many reasonable posts we get from people supporting various horrendous ideas.
How many ‘think with your own head’ messages we get from those ‘also’ promoting MAGA. How many times Putin says he only makes ‘reasonable’ demands.

How can we build trust?
I don’t know how but I do know we don’t have any alternative.

We either learn to respect each-other, and build trust together, or become subjects.
And I’ve already been a subject. To a communist regime. Don’t want to repeat the experience.

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, collective identity, In English, skin in the game, Trust

Trump, the Apprentice

February 25, 2021 //
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After ‘firing’ Trump, the President, America’s most important stake-holders, “we, the People”, are scrambling to adapt to what Trump had laid bare.

Books are being written.
Many blame Trump. And explain, in detail, what he had done while manning the Oval Office.

The G.O.P. is somewhat fractured. Some want to get over Trump, others to hide behind his still towering presence.
The Dems act like he was a mere accident. One which can, and they are hard at work attempting to do it, be ‘band-aided’ with some money. Government money, of course.

A few years ago, I had read an interesting article claiming that Trump had been made possible by the media.
Googling to find it, I stumbled upon another. Which summarizes what Trump had done to the media…

I still have to find, only I’ve lost patience, an explanation for what had ‘fed’ Trump.
Trump as social phenomenon…

For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.
Washington flourished but the people did not share in its wealth.
Politicians prospered but the jobs left and the factories closed.

Trump has made himself famous. Among others, for imparting new meaning to the concept of ‘fake-news’. And for using “alternative facts” to introduce us to an ‘alternative reality’. His…

Only his reality did have something in common with that faced by many of his fellow Americans.

“Middle class incomes have shrunk 8.5 percent since 2000, after enjoying mostly steady growth during the previous decade. In 2011, the average income for the middle 60 percent of households stood at $53,042, down from $58,009 at the start of the millennium.“

Oops!
Suddenly, Trump’s ‘alternative’ reality – part of it, at least, has become one with that experienced by “we, the People”. By a majority of them, anyway.

What made so many people – dispirited, undoubtedly, believe that a self professed pussy grabber and proud member of the Washington establishment would solve their real-life problems… by ‘draining’ the very ‘swamp’ in which he had grown to his present stature … that’s something for other people to explain.

My point being that Trump’s behavior had very closely followed that of Goethe’s Apprentice Sorcerer. He had used his uncanny knack of playing hide-and-seek with reality to climb into the Oval Office only to be fired after one mandate.
To be the first American President who had survived two impeachments.
And the second one who had witnessed – more or less unmoved, the untimely demise of half a million Americans due to disease

But the first who had done that during a mostly peaceful mandate. Pandemic, true enough, but otherwise peaceful.

NB. The ‘Spanish Flu’ pandemic, which had happened during Woodrow Wilson’s mandate, had caused the death of 675 000 Americans. Only that had occurred just after a world war, when viruses hadn’t yet been discovered and man hadn’t yet walked on the Moon.

What will happen next?

Who knows… Goethe’s poem had a relatively happy ending because a master sorcerer was at hand. Who had solved the problem with a swift gesture of his powerful wand.

No such easy solution is available now.
But one thing has become clear.
Again…

Two things, actually.
Too many dispirited people eventually become a powerful – and highly unstable, ‘Petri dish’. Where all kinds of ‘social experiments’ might ‘spontaneously’ explode.
And playing with people’s passions might take you places. But will, almost always, end up badly.

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Categories arrogance, authoritarianism, awareness, Choices we make, collective identity, complementary ways of attending knowlege, democracy, effective communication, evolution, In English, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, man induced fragility, manipulation, Mutual Respect, Psychology, teleology, Trust

Coming from their future

January 7, 2021 //
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“Trump summoned supporters to “wild” protest, and told them to fight. They did“

One of my high-school mates had emigrated to Canada. From Romania. He’s been living there for 25 years now. We keep in touch. A few years ago, he told me:

“We come from their future. I currently experience things which had already happened in Romania.”

His prophecy had been fulfilled, and then some, yesterday. The sixth of January, 2021.

1991, Romanian miners occupying the Romanian Parliament.

The differences between the two instances exist and they are not insignificant.

Both Trump and Iliescu – the Romanian president at that time, had been democratically elected. Both on populist platforms, even if the concept wasn’t as widely used in 1991 as it is now.

Only 1991 wasn’t the first time the miners had come to Bucharest.
In 1990 Ion Iliescu – the ‘cripto’ communist leader who had risen to power as a consequence of the 1989 uprising, had ‘thanked’ the miners for quelling a ‘festering’ anti neo-communist protest organized mainly by students.
In fact, this had been yet another precedent. ‘Occupy’ Piata Universitatii 1990 versus Occupy ‘Everything’ 2011.
In 1991, the miners had, again, ‘occupied’ Bucharest. Again, ‘supposedly’, under their own volition. The then prime minister, Petre Roman, had adopted some very stringent free market reforms. Which had fallen foul of both Iliescu and certain swaths of the population. Hence the miners had not been driven back to Valea Jiului until Petre Roman had been revoked from office.

And 1991 wasn’t the last time the miners had attempted to make themselves noticed…
As the old saying goes, it’s harder to quiet down a hornet’s nest than to stir it up!

We’ll see, as the blind man always says.

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Categories 1989, altruism, arrogance, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, democracy, effective communication, evolution, freedom, In English, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, manipulation, Mutual Respect, politics, skin in the game, The kind of world we live in, time