Erik

Fascinating back and forth. I have a quick question (apologies for the poor articulation): Assuming the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine(s) is ...

@"Ross Campbell" One reason for Nietzsche's contempt for Christianity is its positing of the meaning of this life in a beyond (a crude form of Platoni...

Excellent. Lots of wisdom in that post.

True. I suppose it all depends on the seriousness with which one engages these issues and ideas, ideas that contain(ed) genuine insight but have becom...

I certainly feel like Trump's election fucked up the vibe a bit too - or maybe even more than a bit - a few years ago. Speaking generally, posters and...

Vent away. You seem to know a lot more about this topic than I do and I'm always eager to assimilate new knowledge and ideas into my hopefully larger ...

I'm not familiar with this concept's technical usage or even the debates in which it has its place, but it somehow makes intuitive sense by avoiding s...

Yeah, I think you're right. I know the shift in direction away from colorblindness and toward racial identity politics predates Trump (eg black separa...

:up: Totally agree. I have my own idiosyncratic brand of politics - a weird but imho coherent blend of a certain type of older conservatism and progre...

This seems like an extremely uncharitable interpretation of a common platitude that simply means you don't give a shit about what others look like, yo...

Absolutely. In US history at least wealthy economic conservatives have talked a good game about the virtues of self-discipline and freedom from govern...

Absolutely, Baden. There's a strong streak of anti-intellectualism that runs through American history dating back to the Great Awakening and Trump fit...

Some of the things Trump says (and does) appear to be so devoid of thoughtfulness or even cynical strategic calculations that you're led to assume he ...

For sure. I was originally so focused on the possible deception in the title that I didn't notice its humor.

Good point. The first time I watched the self-deprecation and the mockery of Biden and the crowd's laughter combined to create the impression that he ...

After watching the video in the linked article I think the title is misleading, and a more accurate description would be "Trump Jokes That He May Leav...

Out of my element here but as far as I know not all religions (e.g. Buddhism, Taoism) posit an all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful being. In fact...

:up:

You seem to have a narrow understanding of “success”—as being equated with having a respectable career, making lots of money, gaining social recogniti...

Damn straight he was right.

An alternative perspective that I hear on occasion is that it’s a big mistake to underestimate his practical intelligence. One pundit who hates Trump ...

Amazing that someone so incredibly dumb that it doesn’t even occur to him that admitting he’d take oppo research from a foreign government—especially ...

Trump is strange in that he lies about dumb things where other politicians would tell the truth, but he’ll also occasionally tell the truth where othe...

:up:

Sorry for the digression. I do think it's somewhat relevant to the larger issues addressed here as it relates to Scruton's character, or lack thereof....

Yeah, I think you're probably right in this case. But would we take the same approach if he was being paid by an anti-tobacco group to push its agenda...

Thanks for the elaboration on Heidegger's thinking & nothingness. You articulated the position much better than I could have and therefore saved me th...

I think his payment by cig companies should cast some suspicion on his motives, esp given the level of research on the topic and the undeniable harm t...

I think your reservations are warranted. I may try to comment on this topic in some detail a bit later, as it will take some time to put forth what I ...

Nice post. Oddly, I think your view of dasein’s lack of substance aligns in some way significant way with Heidegger’s own, to wit, that we’re a sort o...

Oh and in order to avoid confusion I should also add that Heidegger’s views on dasein seem to have shifted through the years: in B&T it’s a bit of a p...

I may have misunderstood your initial point - Heidegger assumed "much of the body of Husserl's work would never see the light of day" - to mean that h...

He tries to do this throughout B&T, which is in large part a reinterpretation of human existence, away from its associations with mind, consciousness,...

Not sure what Chomsky said about Zizek (although I could imagine), but one problem with this position, IMO, is that some seminal postmodern figures we...

Maybe you could offer some specific criticisms of Heidegger's work.

That truly would be an awesome scenario. Unfortunately, the nobility of soul needed for such a gesture is completely lacking on both sides of the poli...

Maw is right about Flake IMO. No chance.

A very good point! Something's definitely fishy about this. A couple Dems almost seemed apologetic about the hypothetical investigation after Kavanaug...

I do think it's odd that Kavanaugh is so hostile to the idea of an FBI probe into these supposedly false accusations. You'd think he'd be begging for ...

Regarding the "devil's triangle" thing, I still have vivid recollection of the time when an 8th grade teacher - in a very strange and uncomfortable cl...

Well when two people give radically conflicting accounts of an event and we have no way of knowing who to believe, then sure, the credibility of the p...

IMO the optics of Kavanaugh's broadside aren't good for Republicans. The juxtaposition between a fragile, soft-spoken, (allegedly) sexually assaulted ...

At this point it seems like Kavanaugh realizes that he's finished as SC nominee and has decided to take off the gloves and come out swinging.

I'd concede that these things are often used as covers for racism, or at least overlap with racist tendencies, but I also think you may be overstating...

I'm way out of my element when it comes to these sorts of theological disputes, but I was under the assumption that even the 'saved' remained sinners....

I'd also add the unpopular opinion that if you are a middle or lower class, patriotic, religiously inclined white person then the alternative to an im...

Seems like Trump is part of a wider global or at least Western trend, in which 'average' people are trying to gain some control over the direction of ...

:up:

I mentioned this previously, but my own political views shifted radically about 15 years ago (if not longer) in large part through the kindness of som...

Yeah that's a good point, although I think I've had limited success dealing with angry people on social media sites not known for charitable engagemen...