As we begin the new year, Lewis Amselem, a.k.a. “Diplomad” has some comments on “The Year of the Donald”, here. An excerpt:
The resistance to Trump’s nomination and election started with prominent Republicans, such as Romney and the Bush clan, and continued with brave talk of riots in the street, “pussy hats,” vote recounts, electoral college challenges, Russian “collusion” investigations, and ended with ISIS on the run, US oil production roaring along, a new tax scheme, thousands of regulations slashed, the economy booming, Hollywood in a tailspin, Jerusalem recognized as the capital of Israel, illegal alien criminals rounded up, UN budget cuts, a teetering EU, riots in Tehran, the “deep state” exposed, the Supreme Court turned around, the Maduro regime on the ropes, and lefties fighting over first class seats on United Airlines (BTW: I know the “teacher” who got booted from her first-class seat by that whacky leftist Congresswoman; she’s a hard-core leftist “activist” who made my life and career very difficult many years ago. Lefties like to travel first class.)
Mr. Amselem is optimistic about the coming year, and I have to say his summary does give one a sense of promise. I’m not so sure — I think there will be much turmoil in 2018, and I have the feeling we are overdue for one of those major events that shake thing up in unforeseeable ways, but I hope he’s right. (In the long run, I think things are much too far gone for the Trump presidency to be anything more than a delaying action, but I’d be very happy to be wrong about that.)
I will say this (along with one of the commenters on Diplomad’s post): I still thank Heaven every single day for Hillary Clinton’s having lost that election.
7 Comments
Not so sure eh?
Well, Jan Morgan’s just announced for Governor of Arkansas.
You do remember Jan don’cha? Gots herself a little shooting establishment down in Hot Springs.
Thank you for the link to Diplomad. We got the link from you a year ago but then forgot it and then re-discovered it again thanks to you. It is valuable to see the perspective of a former insider.
Lot’s of rumors of something big coming down the pipeline. The stuff over at Conservative Treehouse is excellent.
Trump has declared a national state of emergency and seems to be going after the Clinton crime family and there is reason to think that some house cleaning will occur soon.
One big worry is the situation in North Korea. Looking bleak and military action is likely in the next months.
OT
Firstly, apologies again over the comment we made last time. We would like to ask a question. Going though your back cat, we were interested in knowing more about your thoughts over Naturalism and Darwinism. You say you changed your mind somewhat. What caused this shift? We have been thinking things over – stress testing Naturalism – and it would be good to have some food for thought.
BTW, we have been reading Maverick Philosopher for about four or five years and it is a great resource.
Probably not until at least after Seoul’s Olympics.
IE,
I still lean strongly toward naturalism and Darwinism; what has changed is that what once were near-certainties for me — in particular, the nonexistence of God — are now open questions. Much of this is due to many years of online interactions with sophisticated theists, such as Bill Vallicella. I’ll add that having come to believe that secularism is maladaptive (see here) puts me in the awkward position of having to advocate for society beliefs I didn’t share personally (not that this says anything about the ontological status of God, of course).
I must say also that mere Darwinism seems increasingly unsatisfying to me as an explanation for the overwhelming complexity and astonishing engineering of living things. Perhaps this is in part due to the natural human inability to grasp the immensities of time that are involved. I simply don’t know.
Despite the remarks you left in your first comment here, I consider consciousness to be a very hard problem indeed. I find both dualism and epiphenomenalism unsatisfactory, and I don’t think anyone has offered a satisfactory account of how, or in virtue of what, exactly, consciousness emerges from the matter of the brain.
I am also, I suppose, what is called a “compatibilist” on free will.
I would rather not get into an extended discussion of all of this here in this comment-thread. Perhaps I’ll put up an on-topic post. You could also email me.
@Malcolm.
Thanks for the response. Yes, you probably right about the secular thing.
However, one can, at least, imagine alternative cultural values that not only are compatible with a broader naturalistic viewpoint but are built out of such insights. That, however, would be very controversial.
For us, consciousness is not a mystery but a problem. Epiphenomenalism, however, seem a much tougher little problem though.
@JK
But!But!
We read a report that maybe the Americans are considering making a move during this event.
Suppose Kim was provoked into attack during the Olympics and many innocent foreigners were killed. America could strike and have world opinion on its side. Also, America may conduct limited strikes and risk Kim not retaliating because it would mean killing foreigners and thus risking total destruction at the hands of America and angry, vengeful world looking on?
The moment of decision is fast approaching. It will either happen in the next two months or it will not happen at all. That’s our forecast anyway.
True enough where the Norks are concerned in that, they’re not exactly rational actors I’m certain we agree.
Then again, they’ve managed (somehow) to survive this half+ century passed.
And there’s China.
And not to be casting any stones understand but, I’m not sure China would be so embracing (as others *we know) of a multicultural exercise wherein they’d “welcome” something in the vicinity of *twenty-five million Norkie civilians.
*Refugee extrapolations sourced here:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/kn.html
IE,
I’ll give that a post of its own.