Politics and crime, oh my

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

in my readings, of late, Burns book: ‘‘Fire and Light’’
he talks about how reform, especially in England occurred
especially the ''Reform act of 1832" and where that stands
in terms of the Enlightenment…
and as always, I try to relate it to what is going on right now
in America…that reform is desperately needed is not
disputed by anyone here… the question revolves around
the nature of the reform, and what exactly needs to be reformed…
take for example, IQ45 clear criminal acts… he has been indicted
for 34 felony acts… but defenders claim that no crimes of any
kind were committed… which leads us to the remarkable point
of where we cannot, as a nation, decide on what is a crime and
what isn’t…

It is literally impossible for us to reform if we can’t even tell
what is a criminal action and what isn’t… what is legal and
what isn’t… So, at the top of the list of reforms that must
happen, we must begin with the justice system…
and part of the defense of IQ45 criminal acts, is
not based on legal arguments, no, in fact, most
of the defenders of IQ45 base their arguments on
political factors… not legal…that we can’t put IQ45
on trial because that is, in some fashion, never quite explained
how, but in some fashion, it is election interference… which has
no legal basis in fact… there are no laws about election interference
as defined by the right… which means they are arguing based
on political arguments, not legal arguments… strictly based
on the law, IQ45 has committed dozens of felonies, but they
get explained away by political arguments, not legal arguments…
that IQ45, because of being president, he is immune to the law…
that he has legally immunity due to his official duties as president…
but if that were true, then Nixon resigned unnecessarily…
what he did was, by the right wing current thinking, was legal
and aboveboard… and what this shows us the ever changing
nature of both political and legal thinking in America…

So, what is a crime? if one breaks the law… seems to be
simple enough… but what happens if, and we have seen this
in California of late, where the laws themselves have been
change to adapt to money interests… an example of this is
one of the latest laws to pass… In California, the
legal drinking time is to 2:00 AM… as with most states…
but the Los Angeles Clippers, a basketball team, owned
by one of the richest men in the world, Paul Ballmer,
was able to get a law pass that in their newly built arena,
the drinking time was extended to 4:00 AM… the only place
in California that is possible to drink to 4:00 AM…
leaving one to wonder, exactly how much money did
Ballmer pay to state officials to get this law, that benefits
him and only him in the state of California…here the political/legal
system has been rigged to benefit just one person… and of course
the politicians who sold out the state for the benefit of one person,
they got wealthy on this deal too… the laws, and their passage and
execution are less legal principles and more bought and sold on the
open market… So, what is criminal and what is not, has been
changed by cold hard cash… so, we have seen the legal system
and what is a crime, changed by both political and monetary concerns…
and how are we to reform that if we can’t depend on the laws being
outside of politics or money?

and just as important, if money and political concerns can change/impact
what is a crime, then we have no way to judge what is a criminal act…
How does one reform that? There are many questions here and few
answers, and the reason for the very few answers is the fact,
that we are clearly confused by this notion of what is a crime,
what is not a crime, which is just another way of saying right or wrong…
it becomes a philosophical problem… an ethics/morals problem…
what is ethical right and what is ethical wrong?

Kropotkin

2

this exceptionalism that is a part of the structure of
the American state, in which one is exempt from crime
by virtue of job or wealth or title… is anathema to
the other aspect of America… which is justice…
and the primary aspect of justice is equality…
equal before the law, equal before other human beings…
equal politically, socially, philosophically and especially
economically… that worn out phrase really does capture
what it means to be an American…

"That all men/human beings are created equal’’

if this is true, then we cannot have the exceptionalism of job, wealth,
title or fame…the true test of justice is that everyone is treated
equally before the law… if not, then we do not have justice
in America today… it is that simple…

But Kropotkin, it has always been that way, the wealthy
and powerful are treated differently… but that doesn’t
make it right… or something that we should just look the other
way because that is the way its always been… tradition,
the way things have always been done is not justification enough
for us to walk away from what is the basic, primary proposition
of being an American… that we are born equal’'…

and any exceptionalism of wealth, as shown by our example
of Ballmer or title by IQ45, is wrong in both in theory
and the application of the law… and thus the reform we
should engage with, is the removal of exceptions that allow
those with wealth or title or fame, to escape accountability or
responsibility for actions taken or not taken in any case,
just as I would or you would be held accountable for actions
taken or not taken, as the case may be…

it is not necessarily in the application of the laws, but
in the very laws themselves that are the problem…
for example, slavery, a great evil, was legal…
and Jim Crow laws were legal and law preventing
white people and black people from marrying, were
legal… in my own lifetime… and laws preventing women
from being equal to men, were also legal, also in my own
lifetime…how do laws preventing a group of people, from
being equal, able to pass muster with the one guiding
principle of America, which is

"all men/human beings are created equal’’

how do laws preventing gay marriage allow equality in America?
or laws, on the books today, preventing gay or trans people
medical attention… or how laws preventing abortions is
not about being equal, but about controlling women’s lives…
for it is clear that abortion has not been stopped in this country,
it is has come down unequally on poor or women of color…
any middle class or upper class woman can easily get
an abortion… it’s not hard… but the application of preventing
abortions is done against poor women or women of color…
it is unequal in being applied to women…and thus in violation
of the basic and fundamental principle of America,

‘‘That all men/human beings are equal’’

But Kropotkin, how is it being applied unequally?
that in one state, it is legal and, in another state, it is not…
that is an unequal application of the law… where geography
determines the application of the law… thus, an act, abortion is
legal in one state and illegal in another, is by its very definition,
applied unequally… that the drinking age is 21, is 21 in every
single state and that murder is illegal, and is illegal in every
single state… the application of the law is, in America anyway,
universal… and thus, is applied equally, which is justice…
but the ban on abortions is unequally applied, which is
unequal, which is injustice, not being practiced equally to
everyone…

the question of reform begins with the understanding that
justice, to be justice, must apply to everyone equally…
that is the first step of reform… to apply justice to everyone
equally…

that is step one…

Kropotkin

3

But Kropotkin, what about freedom? Isn’t that the
highest American value? Freedom by its very definition,
is a limited freedom…We are not free to act or say,
without any sort of repercussions… the crowded
theater and fire, for example… but we are not also
to threaten someone or to verbally abuse someone…
at my workplace, we have quite strict rules
about language, sexual and otherwise, the denigration of
one’s person, looks, nationality, sexual orientation, religion
for example… I could call a black person a ‘nig…’’
but I would be fired on the spot for that… am I really free to
say that?

but let us compare freedom to justice… freedom is not
and cannot be applied to everyone… we have limited freedoms,
whereas we can have unlimited justice… if, if we practice
justice to everyone, which is to practice equality to everyone…
to be equal before the law, to be equal socially, to be equal
economically and politically is possible… if we practice that…
justice is not limited to any once person or group… it is possible
for every single person, if, if we engage with it… together…

that is why I engage with justice before freedom, because of
the limitations that freedom has… both in speech and in
actions… but justice can be applied without limitations…
in fact, justice works better when applied to all people…
not just some… or most, but all people… freedom does not
and cannot work that way…

which would you rather have and as always, why that value
and not another?

Kropotkin

4

one of the themes we need to look at is one
that is hiding in plain sight… that of transactional politics
vs transformational politics… Wiki has excellent articles
on what transactional leadership is and what transformational
leadership is… businesses are transactional… immediate or
short terms goals with modest rewards… this style of leadership
is one that focuses on structure, order and goal-oriented planning…
this style of leadership uses rewards and punishments to motivate
employees… the transactional leader, par excellence, is
IQ45…IQ45 never, ever says, we, he always says, me or I…
and his style is tit for tat… and he makes that very clear…

the other leadership style is transformational… an excellent
example of transformational leader is Obama or Gandhi
or MLK… transformational leadership is where a leader
works with teams or followers beyond their immediate
self-interests to identify needed change, creating a vision
to guide the change through influence, inspiration,
and executing the change in tandem with committed
members of the group; this change in self-interests elevates
the followers levels of maturity and ideals, as well as
their concern for the achievement… transformational
leadership is when a leader behaviors influence
followers and inspire them to perform beyond their
perceived capabilities…

the goal is not to engage in a transactional America,
but to engage in a transformational America…the goal is
not to make money, but to become better people… there
are several steps here…

One: education… the point of being educated isn’t about
learning a skill to get a job, but learning what it means
to be human…making money is not the point of education,
but in transforming oneself into a human being… life is
a journey, not a destination… and over the years, we all
have changed our jobs, many times… I have had
several different career changes in my life…
as had you… few of us actually wind up doing all our
lives what we got our degree in… (note, I didn’t go
to college, so no degree, just lots of jobs)
and as this is the case for most people, working in
different jobs then our degree, then it really doesn’t
matter what we learn in school as far as job skills go,
we probably won’t use those job skills in any case,
so, I hold that going to a university should have a different
goal in mind… in learning what it means to be human…
at one time, schooling was for creating a ‘‘Gentleman’’
one who could do many different things… that has
more value than training to do one thing well…one thing
that will allow us to get a job… which then limits us to
certain careers or opportunities…

the new path or the new way to be, emphasizes who we are,
not what we know… and I believe that transformational
leadership allows us to gain knowledge about who we are,
not what we can do to make money…and does a business
today hire based on the quality or a character of a person, or
does it hire based on how much money that person can create
for the company? You know that answer as well as I do…

the American path is the material path… of money, of fame,
of titles, of material possessions, and of power… and those
trinkets drive our thinking and behaviors… we educate
based on those trinkets, and we hire based on those trinkets
and we live, and if need be, die on those trinkets of existence…

who we are is irrelevant to the American equation… it doesn’t
matter if we are good people or bad people or honest people
or kind or loving people… those traits, that make good people,
are completely irrelevant to companies… the goal is to make
money and they hire, and fire based on how that impacts
the company bottom line… not on the quality of a person…
one’s character… and that is transactional leadership…

transformational leadership is about the quality of people, who they are
and the quality of their lives… are you a good person, matters in
a transformational world, not in a transactional world…

so, what have you done today to make yourself a better person?
how have you transformed yourself? what is your own
character?

Kropotkin

5

there is and has been for a while, a feeling, a malaise
in the world and part of the problem has been in
the failures of our isms… nationalism and
Catholicism (which is a stand in for religions in general)
politics… on what are we basing our society on,
what isms are driving our understanding of the world?

Before the Enlightenment, the drivers of the state/society
was the traditional beliefs in god, monarchy, tradition,
the age old faiths… and since the enlightenment took
out these traditional faiths, we have lived within politics,
nationalism, secularism, science/rationalism…

but there are other beliefs… for example, the very strong
belief in the value of education…and of the need for a
strong government and its institutions… but both of
these are under attack these days… the right wing clearly
wants to destroy public education…and the right wing
attack on the institutions and faith in government…
basically, as a rear-guard action to return society/state
back to the old values of monarchy and religions, traditions…

but as we all know, there is no going home again…
these values are now in the past and that is where
they will stay… it is estimated that upwards of 20% of all
Americans are atheists… and I suspect that number will rise
as the years go along… especially in blue states…
here in the S.F bay area, churches are really more
like social clubs, rather than serious places of god…
there are of course, exceptions… the Jewish faith,
but as the Jews have learned over the centuries,
that they are far better off united, then divided…
they have survived as a people, by joining themselves
into a group, and it works for them…

but how are we to overcome the night that has enveloped
America? How are we to overcome this malaise and
feeling of dread that has driving millions of Americans
into the bigotry and hatred that is the MAGA party?

Listen to IQ45 and hear his nihilistic vision of America…
words of doom and gloom and the virtual destruction of
America if, if we don’t follow his dictatorship…
America has collapsed according to him,
we are a third world country, that America will/has
turned into that scary state of nature described by
Hobbes… where there is a ‘state of constant war,
where every individual is against every other, with life
described as being " solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’’
according to IQ45, that is America today… but clearly
that is wrong… and in IQ45 world, one never hears
about love or beauty or joy or happiness… none of
those things exist in IQ45 world… there is no such thing as

‘‘the better angels of our nature’’

in IQ45 world… so, given this dystopian nature of America,
as offered by IQ45… where there is great suffering or injustice
in America… how do we better understand where we really
are in America today?

The ‘‘wounds’’ of America are really self-inflicted wounds…
the damage we see, is really caused by our own failure
to understand what it means to be human… or what
it is that we are supposed to do… as the Kantian
questions ask, ''What am I to do?" ''What am I to believe in?"
am I to believe that America suddenly turned into a third world
country in a matter of a few years? As IQ45 would have
you believe… America is still the envy of the world…
we just have to act on that belief… are their problems?
of course, but instead of focusing on those, let us
work on what we do best…which has been the moral
leaders of the world… where justice is followed, not
injustice… let us focus on what we are doing right, not
on what we are doing wrong… if we engage in, practice
justice as a way of life, we can return America to being that
‘‘city on the hill’’ the moral beacon of doing the right thing,
because it is the right thing to do…reach up, not down,
as IQ45 will have us do… discover ‘‘the better angels of our
nature’’… and what that means…

Kropotkin

6

there is a crisis in both America and in Europe… basically
it is between those who advocates the old values, the old
isms of god, monarchy, country… as we say in America,
‘‘God, country and guns’’ and those who advocate
new ideals, new values… where ‘’‘god, country and guns’’
no longer have the force, impact they once did…
I have rejected the American values of ‘‘god, country and guns’’
as being traditional values that have no place in the modern world…
In fact, I would make the argument that those values are hindering
our progress into the future… by hanging onto values that
have no meaning in our modern world, we make it impossible
for us to adapt to the new environment that we face today…

in our post-modern world, we are not face with questions
of god or what he has in store for us, we are faced with
questions of chance and randomness… where there
are no set values that we can depend upon to guide
us into the future… we can no longer depend on
those superstitions and myths that once guided us…
we have to adjust, adapt to the new conditions that
we face… and hanging onto old values and beliefs
are not the way to do that…
new times, new environments require new values and beliefs…
what does it mean to be human, given we no longer have
the old values, the old beliefs to hand onto?

that is the question…

Kropotkin

7

I just started reading, ''Radical Enlightenment"
by Jonathan I. Israel… and this pop out to me, as an
idea… ‘‘Internal cohesion’’ which is in reference to how
both the new philosophical ideas of Descartes and Spinoza,
and the ongoing attacks on theological ideas had damaged
the ‘‘Internal cohesion’’ of a state or society during the late
17th, early 18th century… the crisis years has been listed roughly
from 1680 to 1715 (according to Paul Hazard)
depending on who is doing the accounting, it was either
the Enlightenment that helped caused this crisis or equally
possible was the solution to this crisis of the cohesion of thoughts
within a state or society… today, we can relate to this idea of
‘‘Internal cohesion’’ as how it impacts a state or society…

For a state or society to succeed, most people within that state/society
must hold roughly, roughly, the same values, beliefs, and ethics, for
that state/society to maintain itself as a society/state… the standards
people use within a state/society must be roughly the same for
the state/society and we see this within both prior and current
states/society… Athens had a set of values and beliefs,
whereas Sparta had a different sort of values and beliefs,
and because of the Catholic Church, during the Middle Ages,
most of Europe held roughly the same values and beliefs…
whatever regional differences there were, it was dominated by the
‘‘Universal’’ church…and we can see from history, how the
set values and beliefs of the Catholic church, were challenged,
by the Protestant revolution began/led by Martin Luther…
and that was one set of challenges in those years…
we also have the Scientific revolution beginning roughly
1550… Nicolaus Coperniucus…and continuing with Galileo
and Newton… again, keep track of the years, Newton was
doing his thing starting around 1665 or so…recall the crisis years
were from 1680 to 1715… and the third revolution, as noted
before was the philosophical revolution of Descartes and Spinoza…
Spinoza died in 1677…

So, we have three separate and distinct attacks upon the
established beliefs and values of the state/society of the
very late Middle Ages, (it could be argued that the Middle Ages
values and beliefs, lasted until 1700 or even later)

With these various attacks, the ‘‘Internal cohesion’’ of
the state and societies, were gradually disconnected…
the same values and beliefs that dominated the Middle Ages,
the belief in Monarchy, the belief in God/church, the belief
in tradition, belief in Authority…
(the Protestant revolution didn’t argue against god,
it argued that god was something different than what the Catholics
held to be true)

And the new revolutions argued against all of these things,
the Enlightenment was held that the old idea/beliefs/values
were superstitions and myths… Why was Spinoza so disliked?
He participated in the attack on the supernatural nature of the Bible…
His criticism of the Bible was very influential during the age
of the Enlightenment…Spinoza also engaged in the first
real talk about the value of democracy… another concept
of the Enlightenment… Israel has argued that the
one of the major drivers of the European Enlightenment,
was, if not the major driver of the Enlightenment was Spinoza…

Now we fast forward to today… and see that once again, that
we have lost our ‘‘Internal cohesion’’ in terms of what values
and beliefs we collectively hold… this split is best
shown by the right/left dichotomy that exists within America today…

to me, a liberal, it looks like the right is trying to burn it all down…
their attacks on institutions like congress, IRS, FBI, the Department
of Education, education itself, the media, tech companies, and
voting rights, has led to a loss of ‘‘Internal cohesion’’ of
in the values and beliefs of Americans, that loss has damage our nation…
and as the poem states,

''the center cannot hold"

and why can’t the center hold, because we have no common
ground upon which to base our sense of being Americans…
we have lost our "Internal cohesion’’ because we no longer
hold the same values and beliefs as our neighbors…

we are in a very real way, in the exact same spot that Europe
was in during its crisis years, 1680 to 1715…we have lost
our values and beliefs, our traditional American values/beliefs,
so, now what? What are we to do as Americans to replace those
lost values/beliefs?

Thus, I engage in the new Enlightenment… where we, as
a people rediscover what our values and beliefs really are…
We live in a new age of technology, of having space travel,
of technology like Cochlear Implants that blur the lines
between being human and being part machine/technology…

Modernism and Postmodernism has left its mark…
what values and beliefs can we have after those two
isms have done their thing to our collective values/
beliefs?

we have lost our collective ‘‘Internal cohesion’’… what can we
replace the old values and beliefs with… values and beliefs
that can become the new standard upon which we restore our
''Internal cohesion?"

Am I the new Jesus upon which we build our new values and beliefs on?
No, I am more like John the Baptist…and is my fate similar to his fate?
Perhaps…

So, on what rock do we build our new ‘‘Internal cohesion’’ on?
With what values and beliefs do we rebuild our ''Internal cohesion?"

Kropotkin

8

let us think about what ‘‘Internal cohesion’’ values we should
be holding…If we were to follow both the Declaration
and the Constitution, we begin with the words:

‘‘All men/human beings are created equal’’

thus, thus one of the values, or perhaps even the main
value we adhere to is ‘’‘justice’', for equality is justice…
to be treated equal before the law is justice, to be treated
equally politically is justice, to be treated equally economically
is justice… so, as one of the values we can follow in our
modern age is equality/justice…and thus stay inside
of the values offered by both the Declaration and the
Constitution… but another aspect of the notion that all
men/human beings are equal is the notion of
tolerance… being tolerant of others is an act of equality,
an act of justice… thus, we can believe that another value
that we can follow is tolerance… and still be within the
Declaration and the Constitution… another value that is
squarely within both the Declaration and the Constitution
is self-determination… which is in this case is engaged
by our voting… granted, the founding fathers had very limited
ideas as to who should vote, but the right to vote was considered
to be essential…and all we have done is to expand that idea to
those who were excluded in the Constitution… that is to say,
those who don’t own property, women, people of colored…
any attempt to limit voting rights is in isolation of both
the Declaration and the Constitution…

these are just a couple of thoughts as to the creation
of ‘‘Internal cohesion’’ ideas that will bring us together
as a people… and there are more ideas… can you think
of any?

Kropotkin

9

if we are to rebuild censuses, or as I have called it,
‘‘Internal cohesion’’ we must rebuild it upon some rock…
but on which rock or values, shall we rebuild census?

the values in question should be positive in nature…for
only positive values can offer us hope going into the future…
and they should be as universal as values can get…
Earlier, I suggest values like Justice and equality…
but what other values can we advocate for?

I would suggest peace, peace as a value… where we
try to achieve peace with as much effort as we engage
in violence and war… Part of the problem lies in that
we rarely think of peace as an objective to be reached…but
as been pointed out, to achieve peace, we must be talking
to our enemies, not just our friends… and how does one
turn an enemy into a friend? that is the diplomatic question
we should be engaged with… and how did countries with
historical conflict, such as France and Germany or
Spain and France, turn into friends, partners instead
of continuing their historical antagonism…
they discovered to their surprise, that they
have more in common, then in disagreement…

and as human beings, we have more in common that in
disagreement… we have needs in common…
as human beings, we have the same needs and wants
as every other human being… to fulfill both the
bodily needs and the psychological needs…
and we can achieve that without, without trying to
screw the other guy out of fulfilling their needs…
it is not a zero-sum game…and therein lies one of
the problems of modernity… we think of existence
as a zero-sum game whereas in reality existence is
a non-zero-sum game… we can both win is the
lesson to be learned… and in non-zero-sum games,
we can both profit from our reality…
and the new reality is that we can negotiate for both
sides to win something in every single negotiation…
regardless of how far apart the two sides are…
if, if we are willing to take a win and get slightly less
than what we would have won in a zero-sum game…

which is the next value we could use, which is to
be happy with what we have… just because we
want something that we ‘‘think’’ might make us happy,
doesn’t mean we must get that… the point is no longer
making ourselves happy at all costs, we now play
a much different game and why?
Because I hold that seeking our happiness at all costs,
leads us into conflicts and disagreements… because
to get to our happiness, we believe that we must play
the zero-sum game… that there are only winners
and losers in the universe creates the ever present
conflicts that bedeviled our world, both privately and
publicly…

In other words, we must reexamine our own values
and beliefs in regards as to what is the meaning and point
of existence… is it to win the game… zero-sum
or to have both side win, but just not as much as they would
have if they played the zero-sum game… which means
we have to be satisfied with what we have, and that
for many people is a difficult if not an impossible goal…
but it is the only way we are to survive going into the future…
as history has shown us, from the ancient Greeks, the Romans
to today, that the conflict that threatens the world the most,
is the income inequality that creates the haves from the haves not…
there is no justification for a few individuals to have a massive
amount of the world’s wealth… and many arguments against
such income inequality… the more people are in the middle
in terms of wealth, the more stable the society is… that is part
of the secret of the stability of America… that there was a rough
equality between people up until the first world war…

How can we justify, morally or otherwise, that it is right
that a few have massive amount of wealth and millions,
indeed, billions have little to nothing… where is the justification
for that? Some bogus and false belief in social Darwinism…
the argument that there must be winners and losers is
simply not true… but Kropotkin, if everyone is a winner,
then people will stop trying to improve themselves…
and that is plainly wrong… for I have rejected the argument
that seeking wealth/money is trying to improve oneself…
we have seen time and again, in the pursuit of wealth,
people commit crimes, violent acts against others,
steal and lie…to achieve an ‘‘ad hoc’’ value like money…
money doesn’t last, it doesn’t improve anyone… it is
a false god, a false idol and one that needs to dissappear…
but only a reevaluation of values can lead us to discover
what values are really our values and what values we hold
are values that were indoctrinated into us by the state/society/
religion/ media… let us reject the zero-sum indoctrination
we received from the state/society and adapt a non-zero-sum
understanding of the world…based on the idea that
we individually do better when everyone around us does better…
that when one individual gets the ‘‘prize’’ and others get nothing,
that hurts us both individually and collectively…
all for one and one for all…

a daring idea… that we fight for everyone, not just ourselves…

Kropotkin

10

We should take a look at what values that exists today,
upon which we can build our consensus on, or our rock upon?

the American ideal of ''God, country, and guns" that rules
in red states… that god is in dispute, the idea that there
is a god has been in dispute for centuries…
and the rise of Atheism in America and around the world,
negates idea that god is a necessary idea… one we must
have… and country… the rise of MAGA and its attacks on
the institutions of America has considerable weakened
faith/belief in America… and of guns… that violence
and/or the threat of violence is a possibility, has greatly
divided Americans… there is no place in modern day America
for guns… this promotion of violence prevents the possibility
of peace… for violence never leads to peace… and it is too
bad we don’t work as hard for peace as we work for violence…
for the only thing that violence begats is more violence…

So, the ideals that drive half of America today is based on
false and unnecessary ideals…one might then argue that
we are held together by ideals like American democracy
or capitalism… but both have some serious problems…
that democracy has been under attack cannot be disputed…
the current MAGA drive against democracy and for a
dictatorship led by IQ45, is one such indication of the
animus directed against democracy…

and as for capitalism, it is false because it negates
human beings in favor of profits… in a capitalism universe,
what comes first, profits or human beings? that is
easy enough to answer… capitalism is nihilism…
pure and simple…it negates human beings and their
values…thus those suggesting that the answer to
the value in which consensus is found is within capitalism,
they are promoting nihilism…and there is no answer of
value found within nihilism…
we must find another rock upon which to build our ‘‘Internal
cohesion’’ or consensus upon…

and what rock will that be?

Kropotkin

11

This came up in the ‘‘Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’’
within the Adorno section…

"The Nazi’s death camps are not an aberration, nor are
mindless studio movies innocent entertainment. Both
indicate that something fundamental has gone wrong in the
Modern west’’

And I can’t say I disagree, but the question becomes, what is this
‘‘fundamental’’ problem that plagues the west? I suspect, part of,
PART OF, the problem lies in our failure to evaluate our values
and see if they are in fact, our values and not some indoctrinated
values of the state/society…

for example, when MAGA types shout about the ‘‘deep state’’
we have to question this… for who exactly is this ''deep state?"
name names… in which department is the ‘‘deep state’’ located in?
where is your evidence for this ''deep state?" and therein lies
the problem… this ‘‘deep state’’ is a myth, a superstition that
has no validity, no reality… unless, unless we can show who
is the ‘‘deep state’’ where does this ‘‘deep state’’ reside,
naming names is one way to engage in this question of
the ‘‘deep state’’… and if there is such a thing, is it a
good thing or a bad thing and you base that on what
evidence? an examination of values can lead us to
an understanding of what is real, as oppose to what is
false, the ‘‘deep state’’ for example…

and therein lies part of the ‘‘fundamental problem’’
of the west, unexamined beliefs like the ‘‘deep state’’
and the myth of the 2020 stolen election… but
it can become far more fundamental in which we
examine values like justice, freedom, peace and hope…

the unexamined life isn’t worth living…
so, examine it…

Kropotkin

12

the conservative, the one who shouts about tradition and
how we should follow tradition, leaves us a question…
Which tradition should we follow? Or to say this another way,
on which rock should we follow if we were to travel the
path of tradition?

for example, we should follow religion… Ok, which religion?
I would be willing to bet within America, there are hundreds
of religions…on which one shall we build our rock on?
some might say, Catholicism and other might say, Protestant
style religions… and some might say, let us follow the word
of Jesus… But within modern day religions, they have rejected
the words of Jesus, in favor of Christian nationalism…
That the words of Jesus are weak and ineffective… they advocated
a stronger style of religion… one that doesn’t show weakness
or panders to the poor and weak… Christian nationalism focuses
on the internal politics of a society, such as legislating civil
and criminal laws that adhere to the Christians belief system…
this could be thought of as using religion as a power source…
that laws and legislation are used to benefit religious beliefs
it seems unnecessary to lay out why this is so wrong,
but to belabor the obvious, there is no way or knowledge
we can use to prove that this viewpoint of religion is the
right or correct one… it is just one religious viewpoint among
hundreds… with no way of showing which religious viewpoint
is the right one… and this is why the founding fathers rejected this
viewpoint… to accept one above viewpoint, is to reject
all the rest for no real apparent reason… given our understanding
of the world, we have no reason, for or against, to accept any
one given religious viewpoint…

So, one what other rock shall we build our understanding of
the world? On tradition itself? IQ45 has said, MAGA,

‘‘Make America Great Again’’

but on which aspect of the past shall we build our rock on…
was slavery a part of America being great? Were the Jim
Crow laws, part of what made America great? Was it when
women and blacks were considered to be property, not
equal to white men? What aspect of the past would he bring
back to make America great again? On which rock would he
make America great again? And therein lies another problem,
what does a past ideology help us with the future?

Think about human beings… in the past, we held beliefs like
there is a Santa Claus, and an Easter Bunny, and that our parents
were perfect… age appropriate beliefs… a young child holds
beliefs that are age appropriate for a 3-year-old or a 6-year-old…
but we cannot hold those beliefs as adults… we must hold
age appropriated beliefs all our life… we cannot hold past
beliefs and think they will work once more…
our beliefs must match our current enviorment…
our current status in life… our belief systems must
change, adapt to the needs and wants of where we
currently are in life… not to some stage in our life in the
past… and so it is true of America also… we must hold
to beliefs and values that match today, not in some distant
past… and in the past, religious beliefs worked because
of the needs of the past… but today, today religions no longer
work because of the environment we now live in…
What can sheep herders from a couple of thousand years
ago, tell us about our modern age of computers and space
travel and technology like Cochlear Implants?
Not much… or said another way, what can our three-year-old
self, tell us about our current life that will improve our life?
I am 65, what possible words can my 3 year old self tell me
that will help me understand what it’s like to be old?
and that is the same as asking the past, the Jews of ancient
Israel, to inform us about what it means to be an American in
2024? and therein lies the failure of MAGA… it uses the past
to inform us the future… a past that has no relationship
to what is happening now… What can a farmer of 1776,
tell us about being an American today? The number of people
who independently farm is extremely small… most farming today
is corporate farming… we cannot use the past to inform us
about today, because that past no longer exists…

today solutions have to be found in the possibilities of today
and tomorrow… not yesterday… hence the failure of
MAGA… and all those who advocate some sort of answer
coming from the past, cannot answer the questions of today
or tomorrow… therein lies the path of failure…

Kropotkin

13

In my general reflection of the world and where it stands today,
it seems to me to be general confusion about what it means
to be human and what we should believe, as in one of
the Kantian questions, ''What am I to believe in?" along
with the other Kantian questions, ''What am I to do?"
and ''What can I know?" and it seems to me anyway,
that the two questions, ''What am I to do?" and
''What should I believe in?" are related… for the one
drives the other… that my beliefs, my values drive
what I do… If I believe in hate and bigotry, as the right does,
then what I do is different if I believe in liberal values,
so called, ‘‘WOKE’’ values… (which has yet to be defined,
but that is the part of the problem, as we shall see)
but the reality is that we, often use words, like ‘‘WOKE’’
liberal, communist, radical, to define and negate others…
the common attack on the left is ‘‘he is a communist’’ but
what is not said, what is a communist? and how do we know
that person, once accused of being a communist, is actually
a communist… in other words, language is used to define
others but no actual definition of the words beings used
is provided… such as communist, liberal, socialists…
what do these words actually mean? The accusation
takes the place of understanding what it means to be
a communist… I have often heard that being liberal is
being a ‘‘socialist’’, but the fact is that America is a socialist
country… We have many if not all of the ‘‘socialists’’
programs that actual socialist countries have…
we have unemployment benefits, we have social security benefits,
we have snap benefits for families… we have a social net
protecting most Americans… and that is socialism, 101…
So, calling someone a socialist is less than useless
given that America is a socialistic country… the major
difference between America and European socialistic
countries is one of degrees… they go to a certain point
and we go to another, but both points are socialism…

So, many American’s use attack words, such as communist
and socialist to hide a failure to actually understand what
the words actually mean… it is a lazy way to avoid actual
understanding of the real state of America…

But in a very real way, that is the state of America… a failure
to understand the overall state, what it means to be an American…
but let us work out this in greater detail… the failure of
the institutions to bring IQ45 to trail, not justice, just to trial
tell us that justice, as a concept in America, has failed…
and having lost touch with one of the primary values of
America… it is often said, that one of, if not the primary
value of America is freedom… but freedom is not absolute,
freedom itself is limited… we do not have, nor should we
ever have absolute freedom to act or to speak… freedom
by its very nature, is limited… and must be understood
that way… but justice, the practice of equality can be
closer to being unlimited… but again, that requires us to
properly understand what justice is… there are those that
claim, to have the ‘‘modern welfare state’’ is by its
very nature, unjust… that it doesn’t treat people equally,
but I would argue that it does… the practice of justice requires
that people get treated equally, but it also means that we
bring people into being equal… the basic needs of people,
both the physical and psychological needs of people are the same,
and that is the base line of how we judge the needs of people…
so, the basic physical needs of people is to have food, water,
shelter, health care, education… and that is our base line…
so, those who are unable to get those basic, human needs,
we use the government to bring them up… the average person
in America has those basic needs taken care of… and we don’t bring
them down, we bring those without the basic needs, up to everyone
else… that is what we mean by justice… that everyone has their
primary biological needs met by the state… if you lack food,
we, the state provides that, if you lack education, the state
provides that, if you lack housing, the state provides that…
that is justice… where our primary bodily needs are met,
and for most people, they are already met… we just need
to bring those disadvantage people up to the rest of America…
we don’t bring people down; we bring them up to be equal to
everyone else…

we often hear how America is in chaos, but I suggest that
this is due to a couple of factors… one, we no longer have
a sense of what values like justice, or freedom actually means…
we take rights away instead of protecting them… the right has
both done so and have suggested to take away people’s rights…
IQ45 has suggested that those who burn the flag, automatically
go to prison… that states have taken away the rights of people,
to vote, voter suppression, have taken away the right to abortions,
IQ45 has suggested that anyone who criticizes the U.S Supreme
court gets jail time… for the right, the loss of free speech is not
a problem… thus defining free speech only to include what
they feel is proper free speech… that free speech, as I have
suggested is not unlimited, but it also needs to be protected
to include criticism of both the state, religion and the institutions
of government…is there a line, most certainly, but I suggest
that line is drawn further down the road then the conservatives
want… is it unlimited, no… and that is the confusion
lies, where exactly is that line to be drawn to free speech?

the chaos of America comes from another source…
that chaos, is the movement from order to disorder…
it is a physics concept… entropy… and what moves
chaos? energy… the movement from order to disorder comes
from the movement of energy away from the object in question…
we, America are suffering from Chaos because of the movement of
energy away from the society and state…
that the right wing attacks on the state and its institutions
are, in part, driving this chaos we are dealing with…
the conservative mantra of having a smaller government,
the Raygun idea, is in part what is driving the chaos of
America… taking energy from the government is
going from order to disorder… and energy for the government is
money, in the form of taxation… to keep order in the government,
we must not have tax cuts… for that denies the government its
energy… and thus leading from order to disorder… the loss
of energy in any form is the path to go from order to disorder…
in any type of system or body… we are in chaos because we
have removed energy from bodies/or systems…
a system, any system including biological, mechanical,
natural (the solar system) must have energy to maintain
itself… to keep the order, to prevent disorder requires that
a system to have and hold onto energy…

so, want to prevent disorder, chaos, then you must put
energy into that system… so, you want to prevent the
disorder of America, then we have to put energy into it,
in terms of social, political, legal and philosophical energy into
America…

You want to prevent gangs, then you must put order, energy into
that system… not in a negative sense, but in a positive sense…
make gangs less desirable and entering society more desirable…
putting energy into that will reduce the amount of gang activity…
thus, we must increase the availability of education to minorities…
that is one path to the increase of order in America today…
putting energy into getting people into schools, thus making
public education a far greater priority then it is right now…
putting energy into public education is a path to increase
order in America today… trying to limit education,
that is the path to disorder and chaos…

so, instead of thinking about the chaos in America in terms
of the left/right paradigm, think about chaos in terms of
how we spend our energy… what can we do, energy wise,
to prevent going from order to disorder… it is a basic physics
problem… on what are we going to spend our energy on?

Kropotkin

14

So, not only on what we should spend our energy on,
but a very real problem in America today is the failure to
think about what kind of future, do we want?

Part of the MAGA problem is that they leave what they
want the future to look like, unstated, unspoken… but it
is implied, that they want the America of tomorrow to look
a whole like America of yesteryear, even down to slavery
and women being property… as I said, it is implied, never
actually stated… I hope that the MAGA crowd actually has
the courage of their convictions and state out loud, what kind
of future they are trying to achieve?

but here is my thoughts on what the future should try to
embrace… one, that all men/human beings are created equal,
that we actually act on that insight… with the treatment of
all men/people being treated equal, legally, socially, economically,
politically and philosophically…

that the role of government is to help, aid in people meeting
their own needs, both biologically and psychologically…
by creating an orderly and safe society, we then allow
people the security to work out their own psychological
needs, but the government can and must, help people reach
their physical needs of food, water, shelter, education and health
care… and that is the future of America… where the government
helps bring people up to the point of most Americans, where
they have food security, safety security, guaranteed health care…
and all the educational needs to be met… that the government
can and must, fulfill those bodily needs become the path
of where we must go as a nation… to fulfill our needs as
human beings is where the government and its institution
must go into the future… and that is what we work for…
that is the future we try to achieve… that is the goal…
for the government and its institutions to meet and fulfill
our biological needs of food, water, shelter, education
and health care…and if we do that, we can meet
our psychological needs of love, safety/security,
a sense of belonging, of esteem…
for those psychological needs require, demands
us to meet our bodily needs first…

but within human beings, there is a dark side,
an unspoken, I hesitate to use the word evil, but
it is dam close to it… that we human beings have
many sides to us… and one side is the positive building
side, but the other side, the other side is the dark, destructive,
need to ruin things side of being human… I have seen, both
in others and at times in myself, the great need to
self destruction, to self-sabotage ourselves…
sometimes, we feel happy and in some fashion,
we think we don’t deserve it and so we, self-sabotage…
our psychological state often ruins our own physical state…
we might be happily married, and we ruin it by a pointless
and meaningless affair… we can’t we human beings just
be happy within ourselves?

which leads us to one point, the use of evil… human beings
for no apparent reason, often resort to being evil, for no
other reason then we can be evil… often, that is the sole reason for
being evil, because we can be evil… and what does that say about
being human? we take to evil because it is there… but we can
turn to being good if, if we make being good more attractive
then being evil… thus the idea of going to heaven, of
spending eternity being in the shadow of god, isn’t very
attractive… we must provide better reasons for being good,
then just spending time in heaven… which sounds incredibly
boring to me… at least in hell, there is something going on,
it might not be good, but at least something is happening…
unlike heaven…the contemplation of god forever
has zero appeal to me… I would rather be cold and dead,
with no consciousness, then spend eternity in heaven…
eternal life has no appeal to me… rather be dead…

anyway, the path into the future requires us to provide
for a better way to go…to do good is better than to do evil
because… we need to create a future idea that allows
us to find a path to that future… without a goal, we cannot
create a path to that desired future…so, we must create
a goal, a destination worth going to… so, what destination,
what goal is worth all of us going to?

Kropotkin

15

Given the ‘‘loss’’ of morality and what rules should human
beings obey, the Nietzschean question of morality,
if not being divine, then what is the basis of morals, ethics?
What is the ‘‘rock’’ upon which we place morals, ethics on?
One what principle/principles should we base our ethics/morals on?
One can draw a straight line from Auschwitz to IQ45
immoral and unethical actions… or does screwing hundreds
of businesses out of money as IQ45 has done, with over
4000 lawsuits because of it, to the ongoing and constant lies,
to his failure to be ethical in any area of his life… or does
cheating on his first wife with his second wife and cheating
on his third wife, while pregnant, count as being ethical, moral?

On what grounds should we base ethics, moral on?
one possibility lies in our needs… we have biological
needs of food, water, shelter, education, and health care…
it is/would be unethical, immoral to prevent people from getting
their biological needs met…but it would also be unethical, immoral
to prevent human beings from meeting their psychological needs,
of finding love, of having esteem and a sense of belonging,
of safety/security… to say to someone, you can’t love that
person because that person is the same sex as you, to prevent
that is immoral, unethical… to prevent someone from getting
health care, as many states have done, preventing trans people
from getting health care, is immoral, unethical… for everyone
has the need, the right to decent health care… that is part of being
the human needs… health care and to prevent that on ideological
grounds, or any grounds for that matter is unethical, immoral…
thus preventing pregnant women from getting health care because
it ‘‘might’’ hurt the fetus is wrong, immoral… to force women to
carry a dead fetus to term is unethical/immoral because it threatens
the health of that woman… so, in doing so, forcing women to
carry a dead fetus to term, that is against the women’s needs
and is unethical/immoral…

we can now see how we can define ethics and morals, based
on the needs of people… both biological and psychological…
but we can reject IQ45 actions of cheating on all three of his wives,
because that isn’t a biological nor a psychological need…
and if cheating on your wife, fulfills a psychological need,
something is drastically wrong with you…

(I have been married for 28 years and have never felt the need to cheat
on my wife… my psychological needs are and continue to be
met by her… and if they are no longer being met by her,
then I have a choice to divorce her… there are other choices
rather than cheating on her… because cheating on her to met
my own psychological needs is immoral, unethical or one might even
say, evil)

the tying of ethics and morals with our bodily and psychological
needs is dicier, but our normal go to which is religion…
but I think it is on firmer ground… most people don’t cheat
on their spouses… they have no need, bodily or psychologically
to cheat on their spouse…and most people who do cheat,
usually, usually are engaged in some form of self-sabotage…
some, not all people who cheat are engaged in some form
of trying to fulfill some need, a lacking that they think cheating,
will fulfill… and I can guarantee, it won’t… there is no emptiness
that cheating can or will fulfill… it is human nature to think that
the grass is always greener on the other side is rarely ever right…

so, the tougher questions of morals and ethics I think are best
tied to our needs… both physical and psychological…
will it lead us wrong sometimes, yep, but I think it is on
firmer grounds that tying morals, ethics to gods
that don’t exists…

Kropotkin