Sunday, July 31, 2016

Trump is a Bullshitter. And Nothing More.

(Amodified version of something I posted a few years ago.)

I recently completed reading two papers by Harry Frankfurt, a professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University. One passage in one of the papers struck me as curiously descriptive of something Professor Frankfurt was not directly describing. I paraphrase the passage here with Professor Frankfurt's original subject replaced:

My claim was that Donald Trump, although he represents himself as being engaged simply in conveying information, is not engaged in that enterprise at all. Instead, and most essentially, he is a faker and a phony who is attempting by what he says to manipulate the opinions and the attitudes of those to whom he speaks. What he cares about primarily, therefore, is whether what he says is effective in accomplishing this manipulation. Correspondingly, he is more or less indifferent to whether what he says is true or false.

This passage is taken from the paper "On Truth" where Professor Frankfurter is describing the central theme of his previous paper "On Bullshit."

This is a real thing.

Thursday, July 14, 2016

Read This Before You Say Anything Else About ‘Taking Back America’


"I feel the need to drop a little truth on y’all. So buckle up... I’m about to be politically incorrect.


We don’t need to take America back. No one stole it. It’s right here... you’re sitting in it. Chillax."


Read more...



This is a real thing.

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Where The Rivers Meet (HD)

A wonderful salute to multiculturalism in Dayton, Ohio!



THIS is a real thing.

Monday, April 21, 2014

The Politics of Left and Right in the US

There is a lot of thought given to the state of political debate in the US, and I think a lot of the analysis misses the true mark. I've boiled down the basic state of things to the following argument.

Throw all arguments based on big government vice small government, taxes, Nanny state, states rights; and any other stated ideological arguments out the window. All of these are smoke screens, red herrings.

The real difference in ideology between the left and the right in the US is that the right supports policies that maintain or strengthen the existing white, Christian, (and maybe most importantly) corporate power structure. In essence, they support policies that benefit those already in power.

The left, by contrast, supports policies that are aimed at benefiting all. Policies that are intended to level the playing field between the powerful and the not so powerful or powerless.


That clash of those two ideas are at the heart of all political debates.

This is a real thing.