Kompromat

From John Brennan’s NYT opinion piece today: nytimes.com/2018/08/16/opin … rance.html

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And then this question: Why?

Why did Trump do it?

The whole focus of the OP here in other words.

Here is an interesting [and rather comprehensive] take on Trump and Putin

slate.com/news-and-politics/201 … of-us.html

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Here the focus tends to be on Putin the narcissistic authoritarian appealing to Trump the narcissistic authoritarian. The two just, well, bonded. Only, unlike George W., they weren’t at all interested in getting the measure of each other’s “soul”.

“Over a barrel”:

apnews.com/4ac772445073491aa7d3ca9e558e0144

Again, for some, it comes down to what is deemed to be most humiliating barrel that might be. And you all know my own rendition of that.

Consider this argument: nytimes.com/2018/11/29/opin … e=Homepage

We are clearly getting closer and closer to finally pinning this down. It is only a question of how explosive the truth turns out to be.

Uncharted territory indeed…

thedailybeast.com/ex-fbi-of … y?ref=home

So, if the above does in fact turn out to be the worse case scenario for Trump, what on earth could Putin and the Russians have on him?

I figure it’s got to be either the piss tape or lots and lots and lots of rubles.

Or…

Could Trump actually be a Russian spy?! A mole who had been compromised many years ago?

Let’s face it, who really knows now where this will all end up?

There are probable and less probable scenarios.

The most probable was hinted at recently as one which implicates both The Republican Party and Trump’s own predeliction toward setting an agenda to an undefined platform.

It is , as if , the large scale foreign policy issues , have been held at bay for a long time now, creating a specter, similar to what the pre WW2 planners had in mind, with the old apologists, when cementing Chamberlain’s ‘Peace in Our Time’, still reverberating, whistling through the darkness of Wilson type neutral separatism, the exaggerated context of a personal grayish area.

Much of this is well understood , yet the risk is there that the lessons were not well learned.

It is quite possible that the only collusion will consist of a vast symbolic conflict over the Wall, within which ramifications of over the top searches for wider meaning: as , using
separatism to cover all manner of social conflict as springboards to political assessment and action , may be eventually settled , as a norm.
That is , the Wall, signifies an absolute measure , by which all else will be measured.

Once that is funded, most every thing may fall into place.

The grey area will understandably be resolved by black and white necessity.

It would be very surprising for Mueller to come out with a direct finding for obstruction of justice, for the same reason , that it might too severely estop the too far gone Republican Agenda. But an impeachment show ing a lackluster and borderlinely cooperative President with a pre-existing Russian maleformed cyberplan, (with 2 more years of extended litigated window to knock the wind out of sentiment )is a possibility.

Another take on Trump and Russia:

nytimes.com/2019/01/18/opin … e=Homepage

This part in particular:

“Donald Trump never thought he was going to be president,” the Trump biographer Timothy O’Brien, who wrote TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald, told me. “He began this thing as a marketing venture, and I don’t think the people around him thought he was going to win, either. They all jointly saw this thing as a big food fest.”

It’s plausible I suppose. Trump just bumbled and stumbled into this mess by accidently winning the election.

Had the Democrats ended up with anyone but Clinton, s/he would almost certainly have beaten Trump.

How’s that for irony.

Keep hoping and praying that your fantasy world will come true.

I need to remind you that my reaction to Trump is an existential contraption rooted in a particular set of political prejudices rooted in dasein.

And that is problematic down to the bone.

You’re the one [I suspect] who actually imagines that your own take on him reflects, what, the politically correct mantra of the self-righteous objectivist?

Besides, this thread revolves mostly around figuring out how Putin has him by the balls.

Are we getting closer to The Reason Trump kowtows to Putin?

inquisitr.com/5407659/donal … e-dossier/

It’s lovely how people who would have once dismissed anything that could be called a conspiracy theory, now happily justify conspiracy theories based on rumors at Russian parties. My saying this comes not for any love for Trump, who has always - since long before Presidential interests appeared in him - struck me as a narcissist and potentially psychotic. I just find it ironic how people who would have made fun of conspiracy theorists, appear with ‘evidence’ matching the lowest common level of flat earthers. And they haven’t even noticed this change in themselves.

Lighten the fuck up, man. I’m just following Rachel Maddow’s lead on this one. And she’s a self-confessed “prude”.

The only conspiracy here is the one between the life I’ve lived and the existential contraption that is “I” in my reaction to Trump.

I want to see the son of a bitch squirm. But no more so than some folks here want to see me squirm. I just recognize that this reaction is not rooted essentially in any wholly rational rendition of justice. But [alas] only existentially in the political prejudices that “I” have myself become predisposed to wallow in here and now.

How then does “pragmatism” work for you in this regard? Is your own reaction to Trump predicated on a considerably more solid sense of self here?

But then that’s what I keep harping about in regard to your own incessant attempts to come after me here. Your motivation is no less an existential contraption from my point of view.

I can live with you thinking my reactions to you are similar to your reactions to Trump, whatever vocabulary you want to put on that. I am radically less concerned about the effects of your behavior, however, I would guess, than you are of his.

I keep learning from ya. I can only hope for your sake you are learning from Trump.

That you can live with it isn’t what interest me here. What intriques me about folks of your ilk is how folks of my ilk are unable to react to a No God world that is presumed to be bereft of objective morality without being down in the hole that “I” am in, “fractured and fragmented”.

Once I was able to react to Trump [piss or no piss tape] as I imagine folks like Peter Kropotkin and Rachel Maddow still do: more or less objectively.

For them, Trump genuinely embodies all that make the world we live in such a terrible place. And once the right Democrat/liberal with the right moral and political values takes his place, the world will become a significantly better place to live.

Necessarily as it were.

I don’t think like that anymore. I’m not able to. Instead, I have come to presume that my own value judgments are basically just an existential fabrication rooted in the manner in which “I” construe the meaning of dasein.

So, I become a liberal pragmatist because it is the only actual option open to me. But then I think this: that the conservative pragmatists are in the same boat. Neither of us are able to go beyond the assumption that, liberal or conservative, “I” here is just an existential contraption rooted in the lives that we lived.

There does not appear to be a way in which to know [philosophically or otherwise] how one ought to live.

And that’s before both the liberal and the conservative pragmatists are forced to confront the moral nihilists who own and operate the global economy. They are far, far, far less concerned with “the right thing to do” and focus far, far, far more on that which sustains their own perceived self-interests.

The Trumps and the Putins of this world.

Yes, I believe you. Though oddly I will continue to focus on things that interest me. You can always ignore me if this is too unpleasant.

I know. It bothers you. I am not sure if you have ever considered some of the various explanations I have had for this. Could be as simple as genetic differences. Different animals will exhibit different reactions to traumatic experiences. People are different. For all sorts of reasons, some related to dasein. Some related to built in temperment.

Oh, look, a pragmatist, perhaps not just like me, but to this extent.

Perhaps being a liberal pragmatist is as close as you will get. I wish I could fly. I wish I’d won the lotto. I don’t spend much time bemoaning those things, though their were periods when I was younger I might have bemoaned the latter.

I would say I am doing the same thing, pursuing my own perceived interests. My sense is I have more empathy than those two people, however. And while I certainly prefer people who also have empathy, I do get worried by people who think they make their choices out of nobility and goodness. Some of them cause me and what I love no problems - though I am not sure about their families and themselves - but many others I see as rather a threat.

and then I forgot to react to this…

in your view all choices, behavior, attitudes, are existential contraptions. So my ‘coming after you’, as you frame it, would of course bee an existential contraption to you. Calling it that, adds no information, it does not distinguish it from any other behavior, or any other attitude anyone has every had in the history of the world, in your system. So it’s a strange thing to say.

I could see saying this to me if I said ‘I am actively critical of your posts because it is my duty’ or ‘…it’s a noble action’ or for the good of the world or whatever. But I don’t say such things.

It would be like me saying to you ‘But then that’s what I keep harping about in regard to your own incessant posting in ILP. Your posting is no less a behavior from my point of view.’

Huh? That doesn’t distinguish it from any other human action. Perhaps you were just trying to trigger me.

One interesting thing is you don’t bother me anymore. What I have asserted were patterns of your communication behavior still exist and continue, but they no longer bother me. I still find the blind spots fascinating however. And as along as their is development in my reaction and as long as I am learning from the interaction, I will likely continue.

I think this shift has happened for a number of reasons: I see the same pattern so clearly when you interact with others - how you treat their posts, even in threads not yours, as wrong on the criterion they do not solve your hole issue, how you refuse to justify your own points, and then of course the wall of repetition of your position as if it is a response to their posts when it often is not at all. when I am in the middle of a frustrating dialogue with someone, despite how I may come across, I wonder if the problem has to do with my failure to communicate clearly. Seeing it happen again and again with others and them also making the same points about your behavior, shifted something. Then also having dealt with similar kinds of narcissism in face to face life in recent time and confronting it irl, that also gave me perspective.

So sure, frame it as ‘coming after you’. I can absolutely understand how you would experience it that way. For me I experience it as probing again and again to see if you can actually acknowledge the things you are doing and/or develop yourself. And then to see what methods you use to act as if you have responded. I have no expectation that you will even consider what I write, but watching the activity invovled in your making sure you do not acknowledge anything mirrors things people do in face to face life.

And that is very useful. On some level I did not believe people would go to such lengths to hide things from themselves. I should know better, and I should know all the mechanisms, but, no, I am still learning.

And right back at you. You know, if the manner in which I construe the “self” here might come to perturb you in turn. :open_mouth:

Or, sure, it could be explained by embracing the assumption that we live in a wholly determined universe such that this very exchange we are having is only as it ever could have been. All we can do here [in my view] is to root our point of view in an explanation that comes closer to or farther away from the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein regarding those parts of our lives not able to be pinned down as the embodiment of the either/or world.

To the extent that you are able to garner and then sustain some level of “comfort and consolation” in choosing behaviors that leave you less “fractured and fragmented” than “I” am [here and now] is the extent to which [in my view] we understand the actual existential parameters of pragmatism in different ways.

Though I really don’t spend much time “bemoaning” the plight that I have thought myself into beacuse I am not politically active as I once was. Back then you were expected to toe the party line because the party line was in fact construed to be either The Right Thing To do or, at the very least, reflected the best of all possible worlds. In part I was abandoned [literally] by my own “comrades” because the manner in which I construe the components of moral nihilism simply disturbed them too much. The last thing most folks on the left [or the right] want to be is “fractured and fragmented” when confronting a political phenomena like Don Trump.

On the contrary, the overwhelming preponderance of the choices, behaviors and attitudes that we choose from day to day revolve entirely around contexts in which the either/or world prevails. We do what we do because it is the only thing that it makes sense to do. We’re not conflicted at all.

The existential contraption part [for me] is embedded in those contexts in which we grapple with doing one thing rather than another. Either because we are not ourselves sure of what to do, or becasue others confront what we do choose and a conflict ensues.

I bother people to the extent that the manner in which I perceive myself as fractured and fragmented gets closer and closer to making them feel the same way. The more they begin to think that being down in my hole is actually a rational understanding of the “human condition” in the is/ought world, the more “broken” they begin to feel themselves. The objectivists here obviously, but even the occasional pragmatist still able to hold on with a firmer grip to the “real me” in sync with “the right thing to do”.

It’s more me trying to figure out how they do this that keeps me in the exchange.

So, getting back to the OP, I have to settle for a reaction to Trump that “in the moment” can seem to be genuine and substantial. But then “I” pull back and recognize it more as a particular political prejudice rooted in dasein. Then, like Humpty Dumpty, I have that great fall. And I am then unable to put myself back together again.

I didn’t say anything about perturbing you. I said I was focusing on my interests. You seem, when you even manage to notice it, put upon when people are not focused on what you want them to be. I was pointing out that your surprise that you telling me that that was not what you were interested in was reminding you, yet again, that we don’t exist simply to solve your issues, but are people with our own interests.

‘Oh, sure…’ ?

If ‘Oh, sure,…’ is how you react to my explanation, that my reactions need not have anything to do with comforting myself or contraptions. If ‘Oh, sure…’ is your reaction and further you provide another possibility, one not incompatible with the one I mentioned, then your constantly being puzzled by our difference makes no sense.

This is why I react to you as if you are posturing. You contradict yourself about your own reactions so often.

It’s you who have always attributed my comfort and consolation to my being practical/pragmatic. But now here you call yourself a pragmatist.

So, after all this time you are accidently admitting that that was just castles in the air, attributing comfort and consoling to pragmatism per se. I say I am a pragmatist, at some point in the past, and you immediately call this the contraption that consoles and harp on this for months.

Now it turns out you are a pragmatist - which I pointed out at the time - and despite being one yourself you assume that it consoles me while it does not you. And you refused over and over to consider that my pragmatism had nothing to do with my not being as fractured as you

(and yes, I note that you think there may be differences in our pragmatism. But back then it was that I was a pragmatist per se that meant I had a contraption that consoled me)

And you never once admitted, even though I pointed it out over and over, that you were also a pragmatist yourself.

It must be hard to do the mental gymnastics you are about to do rather than admit that was all just a bunch of bs interpersonal posturing.

Your lack of honesty is astounding.

Truly astounding.

That a lack of honesty might annoy someone just seems off the range of possibilities. As one example of your various behaviors that used to annoy me so much. Good strategy never, once, weighing in on the other explanations for my reactions to you. Because to do that would mean actually having to think about them. No, much smarter to just pretend I never said them, and keep asserting that I was annoyed by you because you are so courageous sitting in the dark hole of truth. LOL.

You fractured self manages to have a rather pompous ego.

I have faced scary implications that no one else has faced, so they attack me and are peturbed.

I see absolutely no practical understand on your part of the implications of dasein on the variety of different kinds of reactions people have.

When interacting with someone else, there is only one possible reason they react negatively to you.

And amazingly enough, it is one that paints you in a good light.

LOL

An updated version of the previous post.

I didn’t say anything about perturbing you. I said I was focusing on my interests. You seem, when you even manage to notice it, put upon when people are not focused on what you want them to be. I was pointing out that you telling me that that was not what you were interested in was reminding you, yet again, that we don’t exist simply to solve your issues, but are people with our own interests. IOW I do not respond to your points about dasein, quote them, and say they fail to solve the problem of other minds or fail to prove epiphenomenalism false or…etc. You’re the one who seems surprised that others have their own issues that are not yours. You bemoan them not being in your hole. You are the one who often can only conceive of other people’s posts as attempts (failing ones) to solve you problem, and you remind them that it isn’t solving your problem, even in threads other people have started on topics not directly related to your issue. I don’t assume that other posters are failing if they don’t solve my issues or write about something else. I don’t assume that if they criticize one of my arguments, I have no need to respond to that because doing so will not solve my problems.

The least necessary thing I can imagine any poster needing to be reminded of is the you, Iambiguous, will continue to post about your issues. That you think anyone needs reminding of this is cluelessness at a near genius level of denial.

‘Oh, sure…’ ?

If ‘Oh, sure,…’ is how you react to my explanation, that my reactions need not have anything to do with comforting myself or contraptions. If ‘Oh, sure…’ is your reaction and further you provide another possibility, one not incompatible with the one I mentioned, then your constantly being puzzled by our difference makes no sense.

This is why I react to you as if you are posturing. You contradict yourself about your own reactions so often.

It’s you who have always attributed my comfort and consolation to my being practical/pragmatic. But now here you call yourself a pragmatist.

So, after all this time you are accidently admitting that that was just castles in the air, attributing comfort and consoling to pragmatism per se. I say I am a pragmatist, at some point in the past, and you immediately call this the contraption that consoles and harp on this for months.

Now it turns out you are a pragmatist - which I pointed out at the time - and despite being one yourself you assume that it consoles me while it does not you. And you refused over and over to consider that my pragmatism had nothing to do with my not being as fractured as you

(and yes, I note that you think there may be differences in our pragmatism. But back then it was that I was a pragmatist per se that meant I had a contraption that consoled me)

And you never once admitted, even though I pointed it out over and over, that you were also a pragmatist yourself.

It must be hard to do the mental gymnastics you are about to do rather than admit that was all just a bunch of bs interpersonal posturing.

Your lack of honesty is astounding.

Truly astounding.

That a lack of honesty might annoy someone just seems off the range of possibilities. As one example of your various behaviors that used to annoy me so much. Good strategy never, once, weighing in on the other explanations for my reactions to you. Because to do that would mean actually having to think about them. No, much smarter to just pretend I never said them, and keep asserting that I was annoyed by you because you are so courageous sitting in the dark hole of truth. LOL.

You fractured self manages to have a rather pompous ego.

I have faced scary implications that no one else has faced, so they attack me and are peturbed.

I see absolutely no practical understand on your part of the implications of dasein on the variety of different kinds of reactions people have.

When interacting with someone else, there is only one possible reason they react negatively to you.

And amazingly enough, it is one that paints you in a good light.

LOL

Once again you get it wrong. It’s not “Oh, sure”, it’s “Or, sure”. Meaning that I am acknowledging up front that I can’t be certain of my own frame of mind here. Why? Well, given the gap bewtween what I think I know about this and all that can be known about it.

On the other hand, we are all in that boat, aren’t we?

What then do you attribute it to? How are you less fractured and fragmented than “I” am given that you make the assumption [as I do] that an objective morality does not/cannot exist in a No God world?

I’m still trying to grasp the extent to which, when you confront others who confront your own values, you do not construe “I” here as embedded in dasein, confronting conflicting goods in a world in which what ultimately counts in any particular context is who actually has the power to enforce a particular set of behaviors.

But we can only take these “general descriptions” down to earth and situate them [to the best of our ability here] in a particular context.

Aagin, only to the extent that you take us inside your head and explain how you come to embody a particular frame of mind in reacting to those who challenge your own values, will I ever come closer to grasping how you seem [to me] less fractured and fragmented.

With me I never feel completely comfortable regarding my own existential leap to a particular political prejudice. Why? Because I recognize [here and now] how my value judgments are just existential contraptions rooted in dasein. And that even to the extent I am able to convince myself that [in my case] the liberals have the better argument, my understanding of conflicting goods then forces me to accept that I accept this only because I have become predisposed existentially to embrace the assumptions made in the liberal arguments. An argument encompassed of late in my exchange with Peter Kropotkin regarding individual reactions to capitalism.

Those pragmatists more on the conservative end of the political spectrum are in the same boat. Neither of us are able to set aside our subjective/subjunctive leaps to partiuclar political prejudices that our lives have predisposed us to to make, in order to believe that in fact the objective truth resides in either the liberal or the conservative narrative.

Again, if your “I” is not as fractured and fragmented as mine, how do you account for that as a pragmatist? I have often called myself a pragmatist. But a pragmatist in opposition to those who embrace a dog eat dog “might makes right world” or those philosopher king objectivists who clain to embody a “right makes might” moral and political agenda.

My pragmatism is embedded in the idea that the best of all possible worlds is one that revolves around moderation, negotiation and compromise. While noting that political economy and/or those nihilists who own and operate the global economy have always [historically] been a factor that must be taken into account.

Than of course it’s back around to huffing and huffing, to hurling retorts in which I become the issue:

Which tells us so much more about you than about me. The fact that I prompt you over and again to take the exchange there. It borders [at times] on the reaction I get from the Kids here!

But…

[b]Again, chose a context and a set of conflicting value judgments precipitating conflicting behaviors. Either from your own life or from a newspaper headline.

We can exchange our own moral narratives in reacting to it, and you can point out specifically my lack of honesty in the exchange.[/b]

The ‘or’ vs. ‘or’ part, lol, makes no difference. It’s the ‘sure’…the, here’s the answer or possible answer blaseness either way. Yup, KT, it would be that, or it could be…and you give an explanation that is compatible with mine. The suddenly it could have some explanation, as if you have not expressed

confusion and incredulity for a long time… then you just blithely give an explanation.

I have answered this question. I have explained that I cannot know for sure why, but offered some options that I see as possible.

Always asking for things already given.

And again after that you request a concrete example. I have done that also.

RR - redundant request.

No, sorry. I repeatedly said you were a pragmatist also, and you never agreed. Then here you just offhand say it. I understand that what I posted did not solve the problem for you. But you were not honest then. That’s all.

And yet again in the same post you move quickly to your dilemma. You could have been honest about your pragmatism back then, but you weren’t. Your dilemma is another issue.

And as I have had to remind you. I did go into concrete issues. I have given a range of explanations for why you and I might react differently to conflicting goods. I have also explained why it would be hard for me, not knowing you personally, not having good ways to compare us in all the possible ways necessary to even make a good guess. But you act as if these things have never happened.

We could have a new exchange and I could point out your lack of honesty? LOL. I pointed out your lack of honesty in an earlier exchange. I don’t know if you are going to lie next time and it’s not relevent.

Let’s call this Shifting away onus and responsibility. So SAOA for short.
We’ll call your criticism that something has not solved your issue when it was clearly not an attempt to do that Narcissistic Illogical Shift of Topic. So NIST for short.
And we can call request for things already done as if they are not done, Redundant Request. Or RR for short. I’ll streamline my responses from here on out.