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| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/10-guy |
I suppose we could file this under the general heading of either "Epistemology: human error/shortcomings" or "Ethics: virtue and vice: malice aforethought" or a bit of both . . .
So the "best intelligence" ca. early 2003 told us that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had active WMD programs. Secretary of State Colin Powell went before a UN assembly and made a case for this and everything. Trillions in treasure and many thousands of lives directly affected or ended. Some say "Bush lied, people died." Trump even said it boldly and clearly in a 2016 GOP primary debate (my jaw almost dropped, but by that point Trump had said any number of bold and crazy things (kill the families of terrorists, e.g.), only to treat them and many others as the high-end ("art of the deal" stuff here, I think/guess/ass-u-me) opening proposition, something provocative to float out there, all TrumpSpeak-like, only to draw back on the rhetoric when a better (more Trump-opinion-centric) political equilibrium is the achieved new focus. (Trump's main point about the borders and the drugs etc. flowing across the southern border is about the need to secure our borders better; his initial July 2015 announcement rhetoric, as politically unpolished as it had to have been, (ffs, are Dems this stupid?...), is taken by the Dems/left as dead-to-rights evidence of "Trump's anti-Mexican, anti-immigrant racism," and then Trump wins the election on the actual issue (border/national security, the drug overdose crisis that basically won him the WI/PA/MI battleground states based on the latest research from somewhere on the interwebs doing all the properly adjusted statistical regressions, supposedly...). (Here's a clue to Dems: The best chance you have of beating Donald Trump in 2020 is not to be so vile yourselves, so first on the order of business for cleaning up your act and getting into high gear is (a) study philosophy (a1) thoroughly and carefully; and (b) actually learn other ideas besides leftist ones so you can actually debate them better, and not be such loathsome losers otherwise, as they are especially when it comes to libertarians and especially Rand. But they're also vile when it comes to Trump, immediately assuming the worst (i.e., racism) whenever Trump says any of his outlandish things that might possibly be interpreted by someone not in the target/intended audience as some kind of "dog whistle" (as Trump must have been using the word "lynching"; just ask Uncle Joe, he "knows" it for a fact...the doddering old fool...?) So anyway, Trump said that Bush lied us into the Iraq War, but Colin Powell presented the Best Intelligence Available at The Time. So was it incompetence in the intelligence community, a bit of lying by actors within the intelligence and/or political community, or a bit of both? Were "intelligence findings" basically selectively twisted for political and perhaps (gasp) partisan-political ends?
And so, when it comes to that FISA court application to spy on Trump aide Carter Paige in late 2016 which the leftist media & ilk/enablers have been studiously evading awareness about, all the while they pursue for countless hours a Russia/Trump collusion conspiracy narrative for 2 and a half years instead of waiting for the Mueller Report (to find nothing collusion-wise...so Adam Schiff-show is a doddering younger fool, yes? ... and if you turn the party-affiliation tables, what Trump did in his "favor" phone call (7/25; Never Forget) is comparable impeachment-wise to, what, Obama's hot-mic "favor" of Vlad Putin in light of Barry's greater flexibility after the elections. But Schiff-show's job is not intellectual honesty, it's basically as a shield for Peloser who could be less of a Peloathsome Peloser by starting with steps (a, a1 & b) above). So, now, we are asked to believe by apologists for the, let's just call it for the moment the DEEP STATE (spooky music, etc.), and/or even some of the very same people who vilified the intelligence/Bush43 Admin for its quote unquote intelligence failures over Iraq/WMD, that - get this - the Steele Dossier was credible and well-founded enough to use as a key basis for the FISA application.
OR . . . the so-called quote unquote intelligence officials - the best and the brightest, the state of the art people, etc. so we were told - were not so pure in their motivations and so were willing to cut ethical and perhaps legal corners if that meant something that might at least kneecap a man they believe(d) to be a dangerous figure national security-wise. (What, was Machiavelli the only political philosopher they remember from their Best and Brightest University Survey Course? Presumably they never bothered to cover Aristotle and they - again, presumably - missed the point of Plato's Republic. [Wait, so that particular utopia sounds too demanding for mere mortals, so might as well give up on the idea of utopia? Is that where Aristotle went with Plato's message? Let's ask the Best and Brightest. Speaking of the Best and Brightest, I assume Socrates and Aristotle qualify. So, Socrates, having failed to convince his fellow Athenians of the value of his philosophical services, submits to their (unjust...or is it, since they haven't been rationally persuaded?) verdict and punishment, which is death. This man whom we might take to be supremely wise accepts the verdict of his fellow citizens, however ignorant and vicious it might be. They found Socrates irritating, let's say, or perhaps a threat to any number of powerful people who thrive power-wise on poor public opinion formation. Anyway, Socrates put his life at the polis' disposal, quite un-libertarian-like, if you ask me, but this is a man thought to be supremely wise in the face of death and everything, so his opinion should be heard out, thoroughly and carefully. The life of a philosopher - perhaps even a sage - was at stake. At any rate, the products which he did not live himself to see where the schools run by Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle's body of work is the crowning achievement of humanistic learning in ancient Greece. Now, Aristotle was tudor to Alexander the Great, who by a relatively very young age conquered much of the then-known world before dying, and some kind of anti-Alexander backlash back in Athens made Aristotle unsafe doing business there, and so he left to some other part of Greece, Macedonia, whatever, his parting shot to Athens being something to the effect of, "...lest Athens sin twice against philosophy." So there.)
So that "Steele Dossier" (which should in all transparency be identified as the Glenn Simpson/Fusion GPS/paid for by Hillary Clinton Steele Dossier) garnered a whole lotta attention within that very same(?) United States Intelligence Community, and officials even swore under oath to the FISA court that this was well-vetted information, this Simpson/Fusion/Clinton/Steele Dossier.
So I find it interesting if not intriguing if not fascinating in its own right - and I think all the American People possessing so much as an ounce of intellectual curiosity should find it likewise - that this now-discredited document full of Russian [i.e. Putin? the grandmaster? the man who evaded pointed questions from Chris Wallace more thoroughly than anything I've ever seen, I mean, after one of Putin's answers in that interview I didn't know whether he had me coming or going, the man is a grandmaster of obfuscation, I credit him with that.] lies, was treated by all the high-level Intelligence Community Officials as not only credible enough to warrant a bunch of attention but well-supported enough to be used as a key basis to obtain a FISA warrant. All under Obama's where-the-buck-stops watch, too.
To restate the point more succinctly and directly: This phony "Steele dossier," full discredited and unreliable smears, was attested to as a reliable-enough document by Obama high-up DEEP STATE officials, to be used as a basis for a FISA warrant. Wow.
So, either:
How easy is it to fool the American Intelligence Community?
or:
Can politically-appointed high-ups in the American Intelligence Community be trusted to act in good faith when questionable "information" comes their way?
(Hillary Clinton gets caught in a similar logical bind when it comes to her whole "email thing." She said "she's sorry for that," and then pivots as fast as possible to another topic, but what would contrition mean here, Hillary? So maybe, just maybe, you didn't break the law with that whole unauthorized-by-State server and the mishandling of the 110 duly classified documents (you even bullshitted the American People about that? Pathetic.), but what are the logical consequences here, Ms. Clinton? Explain to the American People how someone who did what you did should be granted a security clearance at any point thereafter. If Comey were forthright in his July 2016 press announcement and testimony, he would have been specific that this behavior would disqualify anyone from having a security clearance, whether or not laws were broken. But that's Comey for you, I guess. He assures us he's all on the up and up, scout's honor, etc. Plus that whole meeting between Crooked Bill and Crooked Loretta Lynch on the tarmac didn't look good even by Swamp ethical standards, so he had to intervene, supposedly.)
(The high has mostly worn off by now.)
In the hopper: considerations of the thesis/theme that the more philosophical a life the more eudaimonic it is, or some variation of that idea, and that one cannot have eudaimonia (certainly not full or complete eudaimonia, if that differentiation can be applied here, that is, if eudaimonia is not something complete by definition) without one's life being philosophically organized and engaged. In brief question form it's: Is eudaimonia possible without at least some amount of heavy-duty philosophical activity? And philosophy here specifically means theoretical contemplation (toward and from first principles, etc.) as distinct from (merely) the love or pursuit of practical wisdom or phronesis. This is the pursuit of sophia, i.e. theoretical wisdom. So can one have a complete conception of eudaimonia without engaging in philosophy to identify the nature of eudaimonia, be able to identify instances, etc.? And can one be eudaimonic without having a complete conception of eudaimonia?
