A libertarian social safety net

For reasons the merits of which are not altogether clear to me, a great many people have been habituated into the thought that a social-welfare safety net has to be administered, coercively (at the point of a gun), by the state.  We're not even talking here about emergency measures that perhaps only a state-scale entity could take during a deep recession or depression, or during a deadly virus outbreak (there's one I have readily in mind at this very moment), but rather an ongoing, cradle-to-grave, offensive-to-liberty, welfare state.

Consider: the United States had, by today's standards, a very small federal government, outside of wartime, for the first century-plus of its existence.  Somehow the people managed to get by without all of today's largesse; somehow it managed to develop into a world power with a per-capita GDP growth rate not unlike what came after.  As for what has come since, non-military spending at all levels of government (federal, state, local) has steadily increased to over 30 percent of GDP today, even as GDP has expanded many-fold during that time.

On its face, this indicates that it's not some pressing, life-or-death need that feeds the welfare-state mentality, but rather a mentality reflecting a contempt for principles of liberty (to adopt a phrase used in the title of a Walter Williams book).

(As for pressing, life-or-death needs, there will be, for the foreseeable future given foreseeable technological and production frontiers, such pressing needs at the margins.  Even the "successful" (using a specifically statism-inflected moral standard) Nordic-style welfare states still have nonzero poverty rates, e.g., around 5% in "Denmawk!"  And the economically-advanced nations continue to hoard wealth out of the reach of the desperately needy peoples of Africa and elsewhere; part of the prevailing welfare-state mentality is that "universal healthcare as a matter of human rights" doesn't extend to such geographically less lucky peoples.  That is, the pressing-needs-at-the-margins argument that is the wedge in the door welfare-statists use to get us to the 30-percent-of-GDP level we have today, is selectively not expanded to cover the entire world.  The expenses would then supposedly be too unreasonably demanding of the wealth-producers' talents, energies, time, and lives, see - that is, the global top x% selfishly lives high while letting others die.  As for a sustainable, i.e., capital-intensive route to economic development for the geographically unlucky people, transfers of already-produced wealth from altruistic first-worlders, to thereby be consumed by the unlucky ones, won't cut it, however warm and fuzzy it makes the altruistic ones feel.  Only in the era of globalized capitalism has the global poverty rate been declining (dramatically).)

Human beings flourish as members of communities.  That's a point well-recognized by sages like Aristotle.  But it's a category error to lump "community" in with "state" or government.  A sine qua non of state institutions is physical force, i.e., compulsion or threat at the point of a gun.  Under the classic libertarian analysis, physical force must not be initiated or introduced into human affairs; its only proper use is to repel or redress initiated force.  ("But what about x, y, z, this that and the other thing, be it public goods, public health emergencies, depressions, etc.?"  Is it really that such pressing needs and concerns can't be addressed by non-state means, or is there a failure of imagination involved?  And is even a hardcore libertarian analysis not amenable in any way to libertarian interpretations of the invasiveness to human autonomy that is a public health threat?  Are we even really sure that economic depressions come from the operations of a fully free market under fair legal constraints?  Are the likes of David Friedman just out to lunch?)

Now, my vision for an ideal social order is something like this: Aristotelian-eudaimonist-perfectionist ethical norms, under some wide or universal recognition of the idea of better living through philosophy (including philosophy for children), combined with libertarian social-political norms.  (Are there such things as incorporated cities even in an 'anarcho-capitalist' framework envisioned by Friedman et al?  There are incorporated other things, so I don't see why not.  So there may be cities, but perhaps not city-states - presumably the form of polity of primary focus for an ancient Greek philosopher - cities being localized and more under direct control of the territorial participants.  So, would such cities have the (delegated) rights to regulate the size of soft drink you can purchase within the city limits?  More on that in just a moment.)  Under such a social framework, based on eudaimonist or flourishing norms alone, there would be a large private-sector-based social safety net, probably operating under the virtue-based norm of aid that Rand/Galt promulgated in Atlas Shrugged (and which Rand-bashers refuse to acknowledge, having lazily/recklessly caricatured her egoism in base, non-virtue-based terms).

So let's say I am posed the question, "If you could eliminate the ongoing cradle-to-grave welfare state right now, given all its offenses to human liberty, would you advocate for that?"  But under scrutiny, the terms of the question are a moot point.  Hypotheticals or counterfactuals should be treated with all the seriousness they deserve, which is to say, they need to consider not merely the consequent but the preconditions for the antecedent.  (That is to say, hypotheticals or counterfactuals are open to abuse in the absence of proper context-keeping.)  That is to say, there is no conceivable scenario, under proper constraints for conceiving things, in which the welfare state is going to be eliminated right now.  (Properly constrained conceiving - as distinct from, say, imagining - doesn't permit conceiving of pigs who can fly unaided, hence the saying.  No proper concept of "pig" allows for it; it would drop the context of how we came to form and maintain the concept.)  The prevailing norms of American society won't allow for it.  The people would have to be converted to the Aristotelian-etc. principles I note and link to above, or be moved considerably in such a direction, or some such widespread values-alteration.

Would cities or other territorial communities make laws or regulations about soft drink sizes, or sexual practices, or other matters of virtue?  Or is there something about the libertarian norm that reflects and informs how people ought to treat one another generally speaking?  Or more exactly, is it something about what explains, grounds, or informs the libertarian norm (linking again) that involves a perhaps-judgmental yet laissez-faire attitude toward how people conduct their lives?  I mean, let's say that rather than paternistically regulating soft drink purchases, people apply Rand/Galt's virtue-based approach and condition social aid on either past virtuous behavior or on education for future virtuous behavior?  I think that this eudaimonist-libertarian way of thinking, actually present but largely implicit or inchoate in a great number of American people, helps explain what they find so offensive about Mayor Bloomberg's paternalism (which flows over into the mentality behind his highly intrusive "stop-and-frisk" policies, a mentality I don't see being extricated from his worldview all that soon, the same as with the elitist hubris behind his comments about farming skills).  Anyway, eudaimonist-libertarian social norms would emphasize education toward people exercising their best judgment, and then leaving it up to them to exercise their judgment given their own context of knowledge and hierarchy of values.  Like, duh?

To sum up: Like perhaps quite a lot of libertarians, I'm all for a robust social-welfare safety net and other virtues of sociality and community, just not at the point of a gun.  And with enough imagination (fueled by an intellectual perfectionism and/or the kind or quality of thinking behind Nozick's appallingly neglected framework for utopia) as well as ample benevolence, wouldn't it be a better safety net than the one currently existing?

[Addendum: Under a broadly prevailing culture of Aristotelian intellectual perfectionism, would there be even nearly as much need for social safety net institutions, or would people be a lot more self-sufficient in that regard?  I urge much properly-constrained imaginative conceiving in this regard.  Much like Rand, and contrary to the usual lazy caricatures of her, I have a very high view of human potentialities even as regards the less talented; while I don't envision a repeal of the bell curve, I envision a marked 'rightward' shifting of it under culturally Aristotelian conditions.]

Commerce and philosophy

"I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person." -Apology

An excerpt from Ezra Klein's new book, Why We're Polarized, explains how social media (which are commercial ventures) contribute to political polarization.  They cater to people's sense of their identity.  A flavor of Klein's excerpt (which is worth reading in its whole):

To post that article on Facebook is to make a statement about who you are, who your group is, and, just as important, who is excluded.
In political media, identity is affirmed and activated with slightly more oblique headlines. But the underlying dynamic is the same: This public figure that you and everyone in your group loathe said something awful. This poll came out saying you and your group are going to win or, better yet, that your out-group is going to lose. This slashing column explains why you’re right about everything and why your opponents are wrong.
[...]
When I entered journalism, the term of art for pieces infused with perspective was “opinion journalism.” The point of the work was to convey an opinion. Nowadays, I think a lot of it is closer to “identity journalism” — the effect of the work, given the social channels through which it’s consumed, is to reinforce an identity.
But an identity, once adopted, is harder to change than an opinion. An identity that binds you into a community you care about is costly and painful to abandon, and the mind will go to great lengths to avoid abandoning it. So the more media people see that encourages them to think of themselves as part of a group, and the more they publicly proclaim — through sharing and liking and following and subscribing — that they are part of a group, the deeper that identity roots and the more resistant the underlying views become to change.

The bad online social dynamics that result from this are all well-known and widely loathed by now, but it got this way because it was profitable for the social-media companies to form their algorithms in this direction.  It is, in other words, what the market demands, and they're meeting that demand.

In an intellectually bankrupt culture, the natural result is the highly-polarized toxicity.  (For reasons I've given time and time again, a very large share of the blame for this goes to what I now term a structural dishonesty in the intellectual culture of leftism; the only question for me is whether this structural dishonesty is subtle, or whether it is blatantly obvious.)  (Other examples of structural dishonesty would be authoritarian regimes, such as those in China and Iran, that censor and punish dissenting voices.  No question in these cases how blatantly obvious the dishonesty is.)

The point I'll jump right to: Commerce is neither good nor bad, per se.  It is how well-ordered the commerce is, vis-a-vis the needs and care of the soul.  I'm not really saying anything new here, but I think social media toxicity and polarization are explained by the principle involved.  Social media algorithms are directed toward user pleasure or utility, but the dollar - the bottom line - does not discriminate between the higher and lower pleasures.  A pleasure that is triggered by having one's prejudices reaffirmed is a lower - base and ignoble - pleasure.  A pleasure related to the perfection of one's intellectual capacity is a higher pleasure.

For example: if you spend all of your cable news viewing time only on Fox News, or only on CNN, you get your political-identitarian preferences satisfied, and the companies'/advertisers' bottom lines get served, but the effects are blatantly toxic.  (I regard MSDNC as a lower level (akin to the sewer if the other two are the gutter) of 'news and opinion' presentation entirely - pleasurable to the toxic/twitterized/AOC left, and repulsive to just about anyone else.)  If, on the other hand, your interest is in dialectic - of obtaining the widest story or context or breadth of opinion or input - then you'll divide your time between these sources as well as plenty of other diversified non-cable-news sources.

J.S. Mill not only famously distinguished between the higher and lower pleasures - captured in his famous phrase "Better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied" - but (and this is part of the wider context with which this higher/lower distinction has to be dialectically integrated) he also said of opinion polarization:

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form. (On Liberty)

Not only is this essentially a formulation of the Dennett/Rapoport Rules a century-plus in advance, it's also a principle I hope over time, with thorough-enough research, to be able to exemplify in my own philosophic practice.  Tying these points together with a figure much-smeared in blatant defiance of Mill/Dennett/Rapoport, Ayn Rand, let's have a look at what Rand has to say about money (a point where she seems to be especially smeared by her enemies if not sometimes or often merely innocently misunderstood by others):

So you think that money is the root of all evil? . . . Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil? [...] 

Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions—and you’ll learn that man’s mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

A strawman version of Rand - e.g., this one in "the world's most popular philosophy [sic] blog" - would excise Rand's praise for money-making from the philosophic context in which it is embedded.  The context is indicated in part by the "see also" cross-references in the "money" link I've provided and quoted from, and is contained in full in the whole of the Lexicon - the virtue of rationality most fundamentally, and the virtue of productiveness more proximately.  I once encountered an online Rand-basher who quoted from the "money speech" (excerpted above) the following one line: "The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality."  (To treat this quotation in isolation from the wider context of Rand's work is par for the course for Rand-bashers.)  The strawman version hyperlinked above (also par for that loathsome course, and which also implicitly if not explicitly recklessly smears the Ayn Rand Society scholars (e.g.) as "imbeciles") characterizes Rand's ethics as being a money-grubbing one in stark contrast to Nietzsche's evident disdain for market values.  But Rand's philosophy was consistent between Atlas Shrugged (where one finds the "money speech") and her earlier novel The Fountainhead.  John Galt and Howard Roark are each in their own way Rand's concretized-in-art ideal men.  And as is well-known to readers of The Fountainhead, Roark was committed so much to his own creative vision that he turned down a major commission, resulting (for the time being) in his firm shutting its doors.  The wealthiest character in the novel, Gail Wynand, is a foil to the heroic Roark, a man ultimately destroyed by having pandered to the mob/his "livelihood."

Put another way: Roark (and by implication her other heroic figures) regarded money-making as virtuous as long as it was virtuous, i.e., expressed the higher nature and possibilities of humans, including creative independence and integrity.  Rand's commitment to such noble ideals, as against the base, is made explicit in her discussion of that "noble soul" passage from Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil Aphorism 287) with which she originally planned to introduce The Fountainhead and then reintroduced/discussed in its 25th anniversary edition.  The Randian hero is a lover of self in the Aristotelian sense (for Aristotle, the "noble soul" is the great-souled or magnanimous man), a connection that a leading Nietzsche translator and interpreter, Walter Kaufmann, drew in his editor's footnote to Aphorism 287.

Which is to say, to neatly tie the various themes of this post together, that to combat social media toxicity in particular and commercial crassness in general, the market participants could do considerably better to aspire to the ideals espoused by Aristotle, Nietzsche and Rand - and to aspire to greater virtue/nobility/wisdom/understanding/dialectic/etc. generally (as with Socrates, Mill, Rapoport and Dennett).

Damore vs. Google: the case for the plaintiff

I relish writing posts like this one because I have absolutely no patience for intellectual dishonesty, and the whole left-ish so-called social justice movement, and so-called diversity and inclusion (D&I), and so-called political correctness (a term that has become one of disapproval, although it didn't have to), as these things have actually been promoted and practiced by left-ish types, have institutionalized intellectual dishonesty to a very considerable extent.  [Follow-up posting on the dishonest dynamic of present-day leftists here.]

One of the basic de facto rules of this bastardized-by-leftish-types form of "social justice" is:

Go out of your way to misrepresent the ideas/arguments of those who challenge the "social justice" orthodoxy.

Another de facto rule:

Make sure, as much as you can get away with, to replace fair argument responsive to what the opponent actually says, with shaming tactics.

Damore says that Google has institutionalized to some extent a culture of shaming and misrepresentation, and based on what evidence I've seen, he's exactly fucking right, and it's the leftish ones who oughtta be ashamed of themselves.

Let's take one example of what the culture at Google instills in its toeing-the-orthodox-line employees:

Former 'Googler' Yonatan Zunger considered it appropriate to chastise Damore thusly:

I’m going to be even blunter than usual here, because I’m not subject to the usual maze of HR laws right now, and so I can say openly what I would normally only be allowed to say in very restricted fora. And this is addressed specifically to the author of this manifesto.

What you just did was incredibly stupid and harmful. You just put out a manifesto inside the company arguing that some large fraction of your colleagues are at root not good enough to do their jobs, and that they’re only being kept in their jobs because of some political ideas. And worse than simply thinking these things or saying them in private, you’ve said them in a way that’s tried to legitimize this kind of thing across the company, causing other people to get up and say “wait, is that right?”

I need to be very clear here: not only was nearly everything you said in that document wrong, the fact that you did that has caused significant harm to people across this company, and to the company’s entire ability to function. And being aware of that kind of consequence is also part of your job, as in fact it would be at pretty much any other job. I am no longer even at the company and I’ve had to spend half of the past day talking to people and cleaning up the mess you’ve made. I can’t even imagine how much time and emotional energy has been sunk into this, not to mention reputational harm more broadly.

And as for its impact on you: Do you understand that at this point, I could not in good conscience assign anyone to work with you? I certainly couldn’t assign any women to deal with this, a good number of the people you might have to work with may simply punch you in the face, and even if there were a group of like-minded individuals I could put you with, nobody would be able to collaborate with them. You have just created a textbook hostile workplace environment.

If you hadn’t written this manifesto, then maybe we’d be having a conversation about the skills you need to learn to not be blocked in your career — which are precisely the ones you described as “female skills.” But we are having a totally different conversation now. It doesn’t matter how good you are at writing code; there are plenty of other people who can do that. The negative impact on your colleagues you have created by your actions outweighs that tremendously.

You talked about a need for discussion about ideas; you need to learn the difference between “I think we should adopt Go as our primary language” and “I think one-third of my colleagues are either biologically unsuited to do their jobs, or if not are exceptions and should be suspected of such until they can prove otherwise to each and every person’s satisfaction.” Not all ideas are the same, and not all conversations about ideas even have basic legitimacy.

If you feel isolated by this, that your views are basically unwelcome in tech and can’t be spoken about… well, that’s a fair point. These views are fundamentally corrosive to any organization they show up in, drive people out, and I can’t think of any organization not specifically dedicated to those views that they would be welcome in. I’m afraid that’s likely to remain a serious problem for you for a long time to come. But our company is committed to maintaining a good environment for all of its people, and if one person is determined to thwart that, the solution is pretty clear.²

I’m writing this here, in this message, because I’m no longer at the company and can say this sort of thing openly. But I want to make it very clear: if you were in my reporting chain, all of part (3) would have been replaced with a short “this is not acceptable” and maybe that last paragraph above. You would have heard part (3) in a much smaller meeting, including you, me, your manager, your HRBP, and someone from legal. And it would have ended with you being escorted from the building by security and told that your personal items will be mailed to you. And the fact that you think this was “all in the name of open discussion,” and don’t realize any of these deeper consequences, makes this worse, not better.

Now, does this sound like a response appropriate to what Damore's manifesto was actually saying, or does it sound more like a lack of willingness to properly engage with Damore's context and replace it instead with strident virtue-signaling?  It sounds a lot more like the latter to me.  What it tells me is that the mentality displayed here is cultivated at Google to such an extent that what really happened is that Google exercised no due diligence/effort to explain to Damore how/where his ideas went wrong, how they present a potential danger of contributing to a hostile work environment, and how he might have the opportunity to correct his errors before it's determined that he and Google aren't a good fit.  (It turns out they aren't a good fit, if the above response to a good-faith presentation of putative science and fact is more or less the "best" that Damore could expect from the company.)

In short: does it sound like this chastisement is written with the aim in mind of anticipating how Damore might respond, or is it basically a one-sided rant?

I recommend reading some of the comments that follow, particularly the quality and tone of those who applaud and pile on.  Do they demonstrate a willingness to actually understand Damore's views, or are they really quick to conclude that he must have been promoting the loathsome ideas they attribute to him?  Keep in mind, as you answer this, the general culture of the American left today when it comes to characterizing opposing views they don't like: are they more likely than not to misrepresent - sometimes blatantly and obviously - their opponents' positions?  Are they more likely than not to jump to the conclusion that a debatable point is instead racist, sexist, etc. and therefore beyond the pale of rational argument?

Because that's the pattern I've been observing on the left these past few years now, and it's fucking disgusting.

Now, contrast the righteous rant from Mr. Zunger above with this comment (by James Gillmore), and see whether you think one is making more of an effort at dialogue, understanding and actual empathy than the other:

After having of course read the manifesto and responded to various comments, here’s my response to one of the comments:

“And the answer to the million dollar question is this [i.e. what the young man should have been told, i.e. what would have been far more helpful]:

“Historically [and currently basically everywhere that doesn’t have these policies], it’s been the other way around, where male-dominated work culture has led to a lot of unfair circumstances for female employees. We’re slowly improving, but we aren’t there yet. In an ideal world, such policies wouldn’t need to exist. For now, we’ve deemed the best thing we can do is offset the imbalance of power as best we can and create a welcoming environment as equally as possible for all. Yes, the policies are an unnatural construct for a larger even more unnatural construct: mega corporations, which can no longer be truly accountable for the people they bring on board. The best answer is JUST TO BE NON-DISCRIMINATORY, but since we are so focused on the greed of our ambitions of growth, becoming small and guaranteeing that is not something we care about. The cost is it leaves males wondering if they are now the ones at a disadvantage, and females doubting whether they earned their position. It’s an imperfect system in an imperfect world, but regardless you are here, and you competed against hundreds of thousands of others, so rest assured you’re more than worthy of your position; and if you’re a male, you’re male after all, toughen up, be a gentlemen and look out for the women in your group! You’re a technologist after all, it’s easier than ever to carve up your own path; if you don’t like it you’re free to go.

*the second to last sentence is an imperfect addendum in an imperfect world that will always be loose around the edges; I don’t think it creates any value to pretend it’s something it’s not.”

And a related response to another thoughtful commenter is this:

“My overall response to what you’re saying — and it’s not something I disagree with — is that the degree of response to this young man also must be just. It’s not just “about degree” — DEGREE IS EVERYTHING. What he’s been grappling with isn’t abnormal — and if the only response is over-reactions like what he received from the now-ex-googler who felt it was his job to bring down the hammer, I don’t think we’re gonna make any progress evolving humanity.

“Here’s the thing: when wrongs or violence (real or imagined or virtual) are acted upon someone, you are more inclined to feel for a victim who is a friend. That’s how empathy is developed. But if everyone is enemies (like Zunger just declared), both sides won’t see each other as friends and will have no motivation to understand each other. That’s why this young man doesn’t understand the pain women have gone through in the workplace, and it’s why women and men like Zunger don’t understand his. Not the pain he’s been through likely as a social outcast, and not the obvious pain of being virtually executed as he has been today. It’s shocking that people can’t put themselves in the shoes of said young men, and instead rejoice in his summary execution — especially when that’s exactly what they are asking of said young man. 2 wrongs don’t make a right. In fact, if this was a relationship and real life (not just a blog article Zunger can distance himself from), it’s usually the person who overreacts that ends up being far more in the wrong and having to clean up the mess (if she/he is a brave well-intentioned individual). If you’ve been in any sort of fight with your significant other and overreacted, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

“With no room for dialog, there is no understanding, and no evolution of viewpoints. Things absolutely can’t be black and white. Similar to good music and art being all about nuance to create a mood, to have any sort of effect, nuance and degree are paramount.

“Some people say “well, the line has to be drawn somewhere.” Definitely, there are cases where fighting back to avoid extinction is the only option. This isn’t one of them. Not the way Zunger handled it. And such circumstances are truly rare at the end of the day.

“The young man wrote a manifesto after all — that means he was open to dialog. In the above link I propose what he should have been told. Catch-22 or not [i.e. the commenter I was responding to pointed out that the manifesto writer put Google in a position of a catch-22, for if they now fired him, that only proves his point that Google isn’t truly inclusive], he can be assertively told why things are the way they are — and actually, there is no catch-22. There’s a reason these policies exist. I agree that a giant cancerous mega corp needs them. So they should simply be able to explain it to said young man. If they can’t, or their unofficial representatives can’t, without overreacting, that’s a problem. If they don’t understand how young males may struggle getting it, that’s really on them and a problem that may in fact be bigger at this point in time.

“Overall I didn’t find Zunger’s response very well thought out, but just a way to jump in a pool of automatic validation and be the hero where one wasn’t really needed — since after all Google does have these policies in place and is willing to act on them; I’m sure said young man will be fired. And no, I don’t think that the young kid or man deserves this sorta smackdown. It’s not right. I’m sorry, it’s just not. No matter, if it’s some manipulative catch-22 ploy by said young man [because said young man is struggling in the workplace because of his actions toward the opposite sex and the negative response from his superiors, and was manipulating to flip the script in his favor, as the commenter I responded to was guessing].

“If Google can’t come up with something to do with him, they’re lacking in imagination and just proves my point that giant centralized corps are on the outs. The young man isn’t Geoffrey Dommer and instead requires guidance. That level of engagement unfortunately is something you rarely find in society. What you get primarily is asshole patriarchal figures like Zunger Games. Keep that in mind when you think of young men — it’s not like the world is brimming with guidance for how to be a “modern man,” while the world is still figuring it out. [in essence, empathy is required at all levels to live up to the pursuit of inclusivity]

“Just take a moment and imagine this was your son. All of 23 years old and possibly social awkward. Imagine him younger, say 10 — where do you draw the line? Now, imagine he’s on the spectrum — after all, we are all on some sort of spectrum as nobody is a master of every circumstance. Would a profile picture that shows he clearly is autistic or has aspergers change things?

“What would you allow to be said to your son in this situation? Imagine your son is 10 and comes to you and says: ‘Mommy/Daddy, why do the girls get to go to the free after school tutoring program, but I don’t and I’m the one who’s failing?” What would you tell him. And at what age does it become unacceptable for him to even ask? Too much power has been given to said young man. He’s likely an insecure young man who just arrived in a workplace with these policies (even if that was 5 years ago), and has known no other. To cast him out as a social reject is bad policy. He will act out like a child you don’t truly engage.

“He’s not alone in the question he had — even for man in their 20s or 30s. Lots of men are wondering this same thing, especially as the world does evolve to incorporate these policies. We aren’t talking Don Drapers coming from a place of status like Zunger. We aren’t talking the scary men in positions of power that women feel psychological acts of violence from. All of this must be considered to have the most effective biggest picture thinking, and grow young men of the future who truly and innately get it. Who don’t feel an entitlement to the workplace over women. Who view women as equals.

“We’re creating the world as we speak, and there are no hard and fast rules (at least not on a public stage). So it’s detrimental that we’re as inclusive and cooperative as possible in ALL circumstances, rather than assume our point of view is so right that it justifies enacting virtual/psychological acts of violence towards another. That’s precisely the pain women feel based on previous work conditions (and current). If nothing else, Zunger made it ok to treat people like that when you feel justified.

“People every day feel justified in actions, only to either realize they’re wrong, or for everyone else to realize it. That’s the “catch-22” of allowing for such harsh over-reactions — you’re not always going to be “right.” If there is a “rule,” it should be that you should always leave room for error and to be wrong. Degree is important, process (how you go about things) is important. I’m sorry, this isn’t the process. It’s just not.

“Let me know your thoughts on what I proposed the response should be. Perhaps we can craft that together.”

---

So that’s the latest. I urge everyone to think with as big of a picture as possible when discussing this. This isn’t somehow some easy obvious topic, like Zunger indicated, conveniently allowing him to skip over it. If it was, this wouldn’t be happening. Manifestos wouldn’t be going out, you wouldn’t be hearing about it all year in the tech press. The policies wouldn’t exist in the first place. This is an opportunity for the tech world to really champion some challenging issues while showing the world both sides can come to a collective solution.

Lambasting either side isn’t the way. It makes zero sense for said young man to write the most thoughtful assessment he could come up with, and to be shutdown so harshly with zero explanation, given what I’ve pinpointed out about growing understanding men of the future. He truly doesn’t get it. And the other side truly doesn’t get that he doesn’t get it. Nobody gets anything because there is no communication. Everybody is enemies. Nobody is friends. Nobody has any natural motivation to empathize with the other side and understand their pain.

That’s all it would take for said young man to get why the policies are in place, and not end up writing a manifesto that frames women as less fit than men in the workplace. And if not him, at least the next young man.

Doing what Zunger did, as heroic as it might seem, just perpetuates a world where nobody is motivated to understand each other. What he has done creates enemies. And yes, there’s a place to draw the line, but degree is absolutely everything. I suggest to people who side with the young manifesto writer to seek to understand the psychological violence women feel is and has been enacted upon them throughout history by men assuming they are unfit, and I suggest to the women and men who don’t seem to understand this young man to recognize he’s not coming from a place of power like a CEO, he’s likely insecure, young, introverted and the only work world he has ever known is where there are policies which seem to put him at a disadvantage. (And also think of him as if he was your struggling child and Zunger just did this to him). In other words, he doesn’t recognize his own power/value. Neither side does.

Just maybe this young man could be a convert if he was talked to another way.

Lastly, the problem of the people of planet earth is simply that they retaliate too easily. If we don’t evolve past that, we’ll destroy the planet. Especially given how fast technology has evolved in the recent stint of peace that we take for granted.

Now, this comment sounds like basic common sense, i.e.: what about Damore's context?  Should that be taken into account a lot more before firing him?  And is it Google & Zunger's assumption that Damore is not amenable to correction where that may be warranted?  And is such an assumption an honest one?

I think the linked medium thread captures in a nutshell, at the level of metadata as it were, the way the left-ish quasi-egalitarian SJ/PC/D&I [sic] crowd tends to conduct itself in (sorry excuses for) debates.  The pattern repeats itself all over the place in the news.  They smeared Prof. Wax as a racist for her "bourgeois values" argument.  They smear Trump and his supporters all the time as racists, sexist, etc., and most often where they have no clear warrant in doing so.  I think it's all quite fucking shameful and anti-philosophical.  Now, are they open to correction wherever that is much warranted?  Well, there's the free-will answer - they ultimately have it within them to stop being such epistemically-unjust pieces of shit - and then there's the "what is the prevailing culture of leftish doctrine and practice nowadays" answer - i.e., they seem pretty steadfastly committed to remaining epistemically unjust pieces of shit for the foreseeable future, alarm bells ringing and all.

I think that if indeed it's Mr. Zunger's post more than Mr. Gillmore's (the latter's) that represents the mentality in Google's HR, then Google deserves every PR hit from this that it gets.  Zunger's rant may have the surface appearance (to the less discerning) of being solution-oriented, but it's not.  Whatever benefit Damore might have gotten from it is drowned out by the negativity of it and the jumping to various conclusions about him that have the actual function of being mean-spirited and destructive rather than constructive.  Gillmore's post is quite clearly more solution-oriented.

So basically the gist of today's leftish so-called 'diversity and inclusion' movement amounts to this: if you don't toe the line and accept the orthodox assumptions, if you challenge those assumptions (pointedly or otherwise), if you speak your mind as classic rules of free and open dialogue would encourage while presenting what is not obviously bad evidence that runs counter to the orthodox narrative, if you are basically intellectually honest in the process . . . that's not going to help you.  You are likely to be misrepresented, shamed, canceled, unplatformed, smeared, piled on, and generally treated with epistemically-unjust disrespect.  If you're a white male, you're likely to be told that you're coming from a standpoint of privilege and that you fail to empathize with those less privileged, and those telling you that will see no irony in any of this.

One of the virtues that many people see in Trump is his willingness to treat this horseshit for what it is: to call out those who engage in it as the ones who should be shamed for their dishonesty.  When Trump says he has no time for political correctness (sic), what he's actually saying is that he has no time for a culture of systemic dishonesty masquerading as being politically correct.  Damore wasn't being dishonest or disrespectful.  I can't say the same for Google or Zunger.

And that's really what all this comes down to.  Is the predominant intellectual culture of today's left (especially the further left you go) honest and respectful?  No, it is not.  It encourages scumminess toward those who don't toe the line, whatever their reasons for not assenting.  The pattern repeats itself so much and so often as to be unmistakable.  To bring up yet another example on top of the gobs of them already linked in this blog's postings: David Horowitz, ex-New Leftist.  Did his leftist former friends and colleagues treat his 'apostasy' with honesty and respect, or with malice and logically-slipshod/lazy or outright groundless shaming?  The latter(, of course).

But let's not forget about the source of what Google HR, the Demo-rats, the mural-erasing San Francisco school board, the Rand-bashers, the Sowell-ignorers, the Title IX kangaroo court managers, the 'diversity and inclusion' hypocrites, the rent-controllers, the race-hustlers, the #MeToo abusers/Swetnick-believers, the biological-males-in-women's-sports activists, CNN/MSDNC/NYT, the illegal immigration incentivizers, the suspiciously eager gun-grabbers, and the rest of the sorry bunch & enablers have been up to: All of this is egged on and made possible by the fundamentally, systemically dishonest Academic Left who've squandered every benefit of the doubt by this point.  (Let's not forget the hubris that leads them to the notion that those who disagree with them are invariably intellectually and morally inferior - and to their tailoring their response to uncomfortable triggering arguments/ideas accordingly, typically by characterizing them as worse than they are or were ever intended to be.)  If you suspect that someone like Damore is much more a victim than an offender in this affair, you would possess way more common sense and decency than this bunch of loathsome losers.

[Addendum: Is there a case in all fairness to be made for the defendant?  Well, how about this for fairness: Google gets just as much of a fair hearing as they gave Damore - which is to say, jack shit.  Got a problem with that?  How about this to boot: its CEO is a doubletalking, chickenshit appeaser who damn well oughtta know better what is required of treating people with basic decency and respect, as opposed to giving into blatantly obvious illogic and smears.  Treating Zunger and Gillmore even so much as on par with one another = Asshole.  [Alternatively: the cases for the defendant and plaintiff were already pretty much made by Zunger and Gillmore, respectively.  In the linked thread Zunger was cheered on by lesser, sloppy minds even though it's clear to any careful and honest observer which of the two had the upper hand in justice.  Zunger's case is roughly about as "good" as we can expect from the Google side (and note how one-sided it is while purporting to be fair-minded), and under Gillmore-like scrutiny the Google/Zunger case is despicable - and deep down every person of justice knows it, which is why so many are alarmed and pissed about this.  The NLRB having made an Orwellian-style determination in Google's favor changes none of this; it is out of its depth on the fundamental matter of justice/fairness here and it's sad to see "social justice" illogic spread into taxpayer-supported agencies.]]

[Addendum #2: Heterodox Academy carries out an analysis of the data/studies about the Greater Male Variability Hypothesis that the powers that be at Google were too cowardly, dishonest, and PC-whipped to conduct.  And to further contextualize, this critique of Damore's argument tries to be fair/charitable, and for the most part it is, but I don't think entirely.  (It's definitely better than Zunger's anti-charity bullshit.)  But whether it's entirely fair is pretty much neither here nor there in this context.  What this critique represents is something that Google didn't seem to even attempt before firing Damore without further inquiry, i.e., actually present a substantive critique.  And while this critique isn't presented in a format that gives the critique-ee (Damore) a chance to respond, revise, reconsider, relent, etc., Google certainly had a moral obligation to give him that chance, in the spirit of fair and honest dialectic or exchange of ideas in the common pursuit of truth, but can one reasonably conclude that Google did so?  Or is the reasonable conclusion that it was being chickenshit, dishonest, etc.?  You have my verdict on that.]

How much of a commie is AOC?

(Just to be sure that AOC's statements about billionaires are fully contextualized . . .)

Just how to the left of the Chinese Communist Party does this make AOC?  Even China allows billionaires, and I don't think China is much of anything to the right of Rawls (see this blog's Jan 2019 post on Rawls for more).  Maybe there aren't human problems that are easily solved by having the ever-more-big-and-powerful state coercing people into doings things?  Presumably the billions lifted out of poverty by neoliberal market forces (a lot of that interacting with the Chinese Communist agenda) do matter even if they still face lots of financial and quality-of-life challenges (her example being ringworms but there are lots of other challenges still to be met via the usual: capitalistic growth)?  China seems to think that the existence of billionaires is necessary to lift the country out of poverty.  Even China.

More importantly, from an ethical and philosophical angle (and not the more narrowly political-economic one, a matter where, in any event, Mises/Hayek/Friedman/Buchanan tower over whatever academic leftists who egged on AOC), perhaps the Chinese learned a little bit of epistemic caution or 'humility' given its past failures due to zealous reform-ism egged on by charismatic 'leaders'.  Perhaps they're more pragmatic than AOC, and what does that tell you?  Even the CCP.  But back to the key ethical-philosophical point: AOC displays a hubris that the CCP already experienced back with Mao and has greater wisdom on that front than she has.  Even they.

(Implication: Put AOC & academic left comrades in charge of China and watch her/them wreck everything compared to what even the CCP finds feasible-plus-acceptable, poverty-reduction/existence-of-billionaires-wise? ofmg lol, how ever do these academic leftist (qua leftist, etc.) salaries keep getting funded...)

Charlottesville fake news, 2+ years later

Scumbag CNN

CONTEXT

The notion that Donald Trump referred to neo-Nazis, white supremacists, white nationalists, skinheads, the KKK, or any related groups who might have been in Charlottesville in 2017 as "very fine people" is false, thoroughly and easily debunked, as perfect an example of fake news as any.  (PHILOSOPHER'S QUESTION: if that isn't fake news, then what is?)  Trump's statement about "very fine people on both sides," stripped of context, would appear to be some sort of dog whistle to these racist groups.  The full context includes not just the entirety of the press conference in which he said "very fine people" but also other statements made within days of that in which he explicitly and unambiguously repudiated - by name - neo-Nazis, white supremacists, the KKK, etc.

In other words, there really is no excuse for spreading what is in essence a fucking lie that Trump called Nazis "very fine people."

It's a notion that took hold in the minds of vast swaths of the American left - Democrats, "progressives," academia, and media such as CNN.  And if you have any doubts that this notion went all the way to the top, just see what Obama said: "How hard is it so say Nazis are bad?"  (How the fuck can Obama not know better than this?  How can he not know that Trump explicitly, repeatedly repudiated Nazis?  This makes Obama a fucking liar, plain and simple.)

But what really pisses me and a ton of people off, is the likes of CNN refusing to own up to their de-contextualized misreporting - the spreading of fake news and lies.  CNN refuses to accept accountability and responsibility, indicating they think they can spread lies with impunity.  (And, yes, had CNN done the right thing and issued a full and clear correction, it would be headline news impossible not to have heard about.  All we have so far, it appears, is a half-assed admission from one if its anchors.)

It's one thing to spread lies and fake news; it's another to refuse to own up to it.  There's only one logical consequence of this: CNN deserves no credibility as a news outlet - certainly not when it comes to its coverage of politics.  The only logical question to raise at this point is: What else might CNN be lying to our faces about, this very day?

Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams (for one) has spent lots of time calling CNN to task for its lies, and CNN has chosen to ignore him.  Well, fuck CNN, then.  If they ignore him, who won't they ignore?  Fake-news motherfuckers.

But as I've proven beyond a shadow of a doubt throughout many blog postings, this is a problem going well beyond CNN and applies pretty much to the entirety of today's American Left and what, to them, passes for decent and responsible discussion about political matters.  The American Left has become chock full of dishonest motherfuckers who think they can smear their opponents (not just politicians like Trump but intellectual figures like Rand) with impunity, and cry "racism" all the time with no consequence, and generally act like scum who have no business wielding power over others.  What's more, if they're not in on this scummy act directly, they are complicit in it.  If they don't actively take measures to hold the likes of CNN to account for its lies (while still rooting out every mistruth stated by their opponents, and screaming bloody murder when they pretend to have found something for sure), then they're partisan pieces of shit who also have no business pretending to act in the name of truth and goodness.

I hardly bother watching CNN any longer; it's quite predictable how its commentators will one-sidedly distort things (i.e., lie through context-omission), exaggerate the misdeeds of their opponents and downplay/ignore their own, etc.; whatever value it might have to offer I can get on another network, anyway; they offer no-value-added.

And that is part of a wider picture which I have also suggested before: the best (not merely good, or okay) minds in politics today have ended up being on the Right broadly speaking.  (Think about it: if someone like Daniel Patrick Moynihan dies and isn't succeeded in Democratic politics by anyone of remotely comparable stature, then where do you suppose the potential successor-minds have gone instead?  Suppose that the very best minds coming of age in, say, the 1990s make lots of attentive effort to sift through competing political ideas.  Such a mind would be carefully observant of the state of the debate, a meta-level observation as it were.  And what if such a mind is not only disappointed by what Democrats and the Left have to offer, but becomes increasingly disappointed over time to the point of being appalled at the intellectual bankruptcy a quarter century later?  What if the so-called minds of the Left nowadays consistently and unaccountably caricature and smear their opponents on the Right (and pat each other on the back for doing so) rather than engage in serious dialectic?  And what if those so-called minds, with increasing regularity, accompany their smears with hubris and contempt for their (imagined) opponents?  At what point does the best and most attentive mind stop giving these intellectual slobs the benefit of the doubt; how obviously slovenly and slothful does their behavior have to get?)  I'll add: those with the more reputable moral character have also ended up on the Right.  The Left has deluded itself with the notion of intellectual and moral superiority, which is belied the moment you get leftists pretending to debate the merits of opposing political views.  The likes of CNN are employing lesser intellects and more morally defective people than their competition.

(MSDNC is even more of a fucking joke; I haven't wasted a second of my time on that pitiful excuse for a news/opinion network in well over a month now; its commentators are obviously of a lesser intellectual and moral caliber, and the only point of its "news" is to propagate DNC talking points.  Or maybe it's just that CNN does a better job of disguising itself doing essentially the same thing; in that they would happen to be only more clever, but hardly wise.)

Even if you still wanted or hoped to trust CNN, to give it the benefit of the doubt, how can you?  If what they've done so far isn't enough to have squandered the benefit of the doubt, then what would be?

If "liberal centrist" Jonathan Haidt and his now-4-years-old Heterodox Academy project, with all its commonsense recommendations for how the Academy (and especially the Academic Left) might restore a reputation for honest inquiry, is pretty much ignored by the Academy (and especially the Academic Left), then what more do you need to convict the Academy/Left of peddling the equivalent of fake news and elevating one-sided propaganda over genuine dialogue, and squandering any remaining benefit of the doubt?

One thing the likes of CNN could do to restore at least a shred of credibility is to hire Republican fact-checkers on stories they publish that might so much as remotely suggest President Trump is saying something racist.  (The Academy and Academic Left could take similar measures in relevantly similar contexts, if credibility, contrition and honor are their concern.)  At this point the likes of CNN should want to bend over backwards to remove doubts about their honor and credibility, or else they deserve every negative tweet the president and others direct their way.  At this point, anything less from them suggests ongoing scumminess.

Politics vs. honesty?

Based on a mound of evidence culminating in the shitshow going on these past few days, I think I can safely conclude that American politics right now is too far gone beyond the point of intellectual discipline and honor for anyone reasonably to expect an honest debate about impeachment and other Trump-related matters.  The partisan excuse-making (for their own) and vilifications (of their opponents) pretty much preclude and honest debate at this point.  This is the wages of a national intellectual and moral bankruptcy, becoming more and more distilled over time.

The only main question remaining now, is whether Americans should simply drop the pretense of honesty, respect for the rule of law, extending the benefit of the doubt to opponents, and so forth, and simply admit that their opponents are or must be up to such bad, hypocritical, etc. activities that extraordinary (by moral standards) measures must be taken to stop them.  It's obvious the Democrats and Republicans think these things about one another today; those who don't think it are being drowned out in the media circus.

The people heavily involved in the political process especially should come right out and admit that we've come to the point that politics is akin enough to war by other means, that the normal rules just don't apply any more.

Is this recommendation for transparency of motive a satirical one?  How would one be able to tell, given what a shitshow things have become?

I'm one of those who find the Demorats in particular to be especially vile and dangerous and socialistic and intellectually and morally bankrupt.  (As I've pointed out, gone are the days of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a prominent figure of intellectual seriousness and moral decency, in the Demorat Party.  It makes me fucking angry that I can't think of a Demorat politician today anywhere close to Moynihan's level.  The current political "team" fielded by the American Left is the best that all of its supposed intellectual prowess and university provenance could cultivate?  That should make anyone pissed.)  I think for doing what they did to Brett Kavanaugh, they deserve to lose at least one more SCOTUS seat until they learn a little decency.

If Ruth Bader Ginsburg leaves the Court in calendar year 2020, I expect Mitch McConnell and fellow Republicans (there was a time - during the waning years of the GWB administration and culminating in the nomination of the dolt Sarah Palin for Vice President - when I held Republicans in such low esteem that I adopted the term "Refucklican" to express my disgust, and I may well have to return to using it) to move ahead with confirming another Trump appointee to the Court.  This despite McConnell & Co. saying (when the president was Obama and the nominee was Merrick Garland) that SCOTUS confirmations shouldn't happen during a presidential election year.  (McConnell used this reasoning in 2016, citing Demorats from 1992 [including Uncle Joe Biden] making the same assertions).

So we pit Demorat intellectual and moral bankruptcy as evidenced by (e.g.) their treatment of Kavanaugh, against the expected partisan hypocrisy of McConnell et al.  I'm conflicted about it.  On the one hand, Demorats deserve to lose at least one more SCOTUS seat; on the other, it would be hypocritical Refucklicans lowering themselves closer to the level of the Demorats, squandering what intellectual and moral credibility they have remaining.

At the very least, couldn't McConnell & Co. admit that the moral rules against hypocrisy no longer apply, and that they're basically forced to be partisan pieces of shit in order to prevent Demorats from inflicting even more destruction on the nation's intellectual and moral fabric than they already have (which I, for one, believe they would do if given the chance to run amok; see, for instance, the bang-up job Demorat-dominated universities are doing to destroy good-faith debate).  They might credibly rationalize their hypocrisy by saying that run-amok Demorats would be even worse in the hypocrisy department.

You have Demorats 100% convinced that Trump is some kind of racist, on the basis of obviously suspect lines of reasoning, and this has them believing (if their words and behavior are any sign) that the normal rules have to be bent or broken to keep Trump & Co. from running amok and making America more racist again.  (Any number of Demorats have suggested that by "MAGA" Trump means to return the country to a past involving racial segregation and other evils; obviously this is a suspect line of reasoning to say the least.)

I think what particularly disgusts me about Demorats a lot more than with Republicans, is the thoroughly, utterly discreditable and disgraceful way they (and their allies, enablers, leftist fellow travelers, etc.) attack, belittle, ignore, and smear an intellectual figure whose ideas I've studied in-depth over a long period of time: Ayn Rand.  Here I happen to know pretty much all the ways Demorats are willing to be intellectually lazy and/or reckless, apparently (if their words and behavior are any sign) out of the belief that less- or un-regulated capitalism is evil and dangerous, that the precious welfare state has to be preserved (because of all it's done to reduce poverty levels, right?), that the universities as we know them must be integral institutions of learning (justifying a neglect of the likes of Rand, and a discounting of pro-capitalism arguments generally), and perhaps a number of related ideas and themes within their precious worldview.  So it doesn't really matter to them what Rand actually said about, e.g., the virtue of selfishness; it's the fact that she supports laissez-faire capitalism on such a grounds that motivates how they have chosen to (mis)represent Rand's views on selfishness.  It's not exactly complicated; it's intellectual dishonesty with a lot of clever but twisted rationalizations and a compliant community of university professors.

(Unless one finds a higher road to take, there is no win-win in an Ayn Rand vs. Mainstream Academy face-off.  Either she is (basically) correct that the university culture is corrupted by leftism and bad ethical theories to justify it, and needs some serious overhaul, or the Mainstream Academy is (basically) correct that a figure like Rand is a crank who merits no serious attention/study [except perhaps as a "cultural phenomenon," a "study" about which was published earlier this year under a patently dishonest title, Mean Girl, by a thoroughly dishonest "researcher," and loathsome leftist loser, Scumbag Lisa Duggan].  One side of this Rand/Academy divide can win only by (basically) discrediting the other.  I've already blogged about how the Academy is fast in the process of discrediting itself at least in the eyes of mainstream producing/taxpaying America.  This also goes for perhaps quite a lot of so-called philosophers I simply cannot trust not to be selective about which facts to acknowledge and admit into evidence; in this they are little better than your typical partisan and most likely leftist asshole you'd find in lots of university departments [such as the ones that Scumbags Duggan and Nancy MacLean are in].)

Anyway, I'm one of those who do happen to value (however imperfect the result) intellectual honesty and consistency, and who are disgusted by obvious partisanship.  (Can we at least admit that the partisan hackery going on right now in Congress is obviously partisan?  Is anyone but True Believers in either tribe somehow fooled that it's not obvious, perhaps blatantly so?)  And I happen to have enough experience and examples on hand to spot such blatant hypocrisy when I see it -- and the present political scene is fucking chock full of it.  Nor - absent an overhaul of the nation's current "educational" infrastructure - do I see things improving here.  The "education" system has churned out a shit-ton of people who can't or won't think carefully, thoroughly, or consistently.

I've been proposing philosophical education, beginning at a young age (and with helpful pointers in the Aristotelian, intellectual-perfectionist direction so that they might learn the art of dialectic as an ethical imperative) as a remedy for this situation, for the better part of a year now on this blog.  Not that it really affects my long-term outlook (for which I believe this blog will become legendary, whatever its flaws), but short-term-wise I consider it a major indictment of our nation's media infrastructure that such kick-ass, commonsense-on-steroids recommendations, and this blog generally, have gone almost entirely unnoticed.  I place part of the blame on the authors of (evidently inferior) philosophy blogs who do or should know about this kick-ass remedy and yet fail to act accordingly by speaking out and promoting this epic no-brainer.

To reformulate a point Rand made about the role of philosophy in society/culture/politics:

A nation's culture is, on the most thorough analysis, the result of the state of the nation's philosophy profession.  We have come to the nakedly partisan shitshow we are currently witnessing because of what the philosophers have done or failed to do.  There's only one philosopher I know of currently who is working on a book project with the theme and working title of 'Better Living Through Philosophy,' and this philosopher has been rigorously and self-consciously pursuing a policy of intellectual perfectionism (inspired by the examples of Aristotle and Rand) long enough for 'Better Living Through Philosophy' to be a more or less natural and inevitable thematic outcome of that pursuit.  Pulled off right, it will be revolutionary.  Pitting the greatest ancient Greek philosophers against (the anthropological "truths" of) Christianity in what may very well be a kick-ass way, is a pretty big fucking deal IMO (whether or not anyone else ever gives due credit for doing so).  There isn't academic hyper-specialization here, as that is described by one of the better philosophy blogs besides this one.

(In some way this here blog is pitted against the Academic-Philosophy model.  Isn't it?  As with the Rand vs. Mainstream Academy dichotomy, is there no win-win to be had here?  Or . . . are we each just taking different specialized-expertise paths, each with their own useful fruits?  I'm no polymath, and have next to no expertise (yet) in such areas as metaphysics, and yet I don't see any other philosophers out there calling out the nation's evident intellectual bankruptcy and political shitshow for what it is.  If the collected wisdom of the Academic Experts can't bring about such an uncompromising, chock-full-of-evidence call-out, then someone has to step in to do the job, right?)

So here we are, headed into Impeachment Season, with an angst-ridden populace ill-equipped to resolve crucial key issues and where so many cannot even get on the same page when it comes to basic facts.  (See the comment thread here, for example.  I discovered this link via a left-Dem facebook friend [somehow I still manage to have one or two of these :-o ] who I don't have any good reason to think had ever consulted or referenced the American Conservative website on any other topic, ever.  See the problem?)  At some point I might end up having to experiment with "channeling" Rand given what I know about her style of cultural and political commentary.  Certain phrases she would use, such as "I told you so," come readily to mind.  The root cause of this shitshow is intellectual bankruptcy, and the root cause of that is the collective output of the community of philosophers.  This, Rand already told America decades ago when she went out to diagnose the intellectual bankruptcy that resulted in her novel Atlas Shrugged being so badly smeared.  (Few of the nation's intellectuals were of the caliber of Hospers, apparently.)  That Rand's root-level diagnosis has gone disregarded by those very intellectuals for decades only reinforces her point.  Again, it's hard to see a win-win here.  (The higher road would be for the Academy to improve its practices to avoid such obvious fuck-ups as Rand and Mises going so badly disregarded, and also for Randians to clean up their own double-standard polemical practices so that we stop getting such obvious, gone-off-the-rails-somewhere horseshit as Kant being "evil.")

I really don't see anyway around this.  There wouldn't be a partisan shitshow populated by obvious scumbags if genuine philosophical practices (the most reliably productive being Aristotelian-style dialectic, according to both my well-honed hunches and apparent historical application) were to become widespread.  Barring that, we can't rationally expect the upcoming Impeachment Season to be much of anything but destructive.

An "optimistic" take on all this dishonest-shitshow stuff is that we're at a point in human historical development somewhere between primitive ignorance and brutishness and the end-of-history ideal alluded to by the likes of Hegel, Nietzsche, and Rand in which unbreached excellence of mind (and body and spirit) is the cultural norm.  And we'd have to also concede that there can be stalls, regressions, and other failures along this path of big-history-scale development.  And so we can have such phenomena as the United States of America being founded by seriously philosophical people, followed some 240 years later by a shitshow run by philosophically-vacuous people (remember the point above about Moynihan), where dolts like Palin and AOC have dedicated and fierce defenders and critics, all depending on party affiliation.

The 2020 election year is shaping up quite nicely to be a fucking circus.  More and more people caught in the abject fools' partisan crossfire will become dismayed and disgusted by what their fellow humans are willing to reduce themselves to, the policy preferences which these fools seek to force on everyone (none of which include philosophical education, BTW) being so preciously important to them that all considerations of honor, decency and dignity must go by the wayside.  We will be hearing a lot about how saving the country from immanent destruction requires their own side to win this next election cycle.  (No matter how what they're willing to do for such short-term political advantage stands a good chance of making things worse long-term.)  You will surely see a lot of political operatives behaving one minute as we might expect normal, decent, likeable people to behave, only to turn around and - shouting all along about their righteousness - partake in the most despicable behaviors.  (See, again: Kavanaugh confirmation/smear process.  Sen. Hirono pretends at the "Ford" portion of the hearing to be interested in the truth, playing nice with Kavanaugh, perhaps smiling and cracking a joke, just days after wickedly and maliciously telling America that Ford is to be believed automatically.  Actually, there is a term for such "nice and decent one day and scumbag the next" behavior: scumbag behavior.)

You'll hear every which conspiracy theory about the other, "bad" side, every which effort to explain away malicious behavior by the "good" side, every which immediate hysterical reaction to some "fact" that common sense already suspects is fake news . . . in other words, what we're pretty much getting already, only more extreme and appalling.  I expect it to be bad enough that even a great many so-called philosophers will get it on the act.  Heck, just witnessing how Objectivists (Randians) - much better on average than the typical political arguers - argue with one another about Trump is enough to call into some question the abilities of humans to reliably meet a higher intellectual standard.  (Criticize Trump strongly enough and you're likely to be called an 'Obleftivist.'  I can't remember right off what happens if it's the other way around and it's someone bashing Demorats, perhaps strongly enough to be a Trump supporter by default.  Almost surely, whatever "side" you take in this shitshow, you will be accused of not having a true and proper grasp of Objectivist principles.)

From an Objectivist/Randian here is an interesting episode in American electoral history that may inform one's best analyses of 2020.  In 1972 - Nixon vs. McGovern - it was basically Rand supporting Nixon's reelection by default because the alternative (the far-left McGovern) was dreadful.  She saw Nixon as a "me-too" statist who grew the government at more or less the same pace as his Democratic predecessors - but in this case, she was an "anti-Nixonite for Nixon."  That's more or less my view of Trump vs. the Demorats, although it simply doesn't sit well with me to say that whatever Trump says or (much more importantly) does, he should get away with it if the alternative means Demorats getting back in power.  It would be a short-term patch with bad long-term consequences for such things as moral credibility and respect for the rule of law.  Whether it's Trump or Demorats winning in '20, neither will foster greater philosophical education for the republic, which is the long-term ball I have my eye on.  I was going to write, "I don't expect either Trumpists or Demorats to take loss well," but I can't truthfully say that; based on all I've been able to witness and determine, it's definitely the Demorats who won't take loss well by any stretch.  Politics is basically their substitute religion, after all.  Plus, they really haven't taken their 2016 loss well, either, have they.  Up until the aftermath of the July 25 Trump-Zelensky phone call, the shitshow was all on the Demorat side, with them basically getting nothing right about Trump.  And they're still untrustworthy, unscrupulous motherfuckers regardless of what you think about Trump's Ukraine actions.  (Again, see the Kavanaugh "confirmation"/smear process for incontrovertible evidence of their unscrupulousness and wickedness.)

I'll try to tone it down a bit for my next point, although I might not be able to do so given the facts.  But let's say that political cognition poisons the mind, destroys objectivity, etc.: you could have loving, decent people who, qua political thinkers/actors, turn into obvious scumbags.  (I've conceded such a point about those I term loathsome leftist losers - qua leftists, leftism being a thought-cancer overtaking otherwise honest and rational thinking.)  But how do I done my point down after the one I made above about behaving decently one day and like a scumbag the next?  How is that duality not itself scummy?  And what if it's not even true that political cognition per se poisons the mind, etc.?  I don't see Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rawls or Nozick getting all scummy once they move from non-political theory to political theory.

So what if the truth is more like the following instead: entering the realm of political activism, in an intellectually-bankrupt cultural-political environment, tends to stimulate scummy thought/speech/behavior.  This entails that heightened character-scrutiny of those drawn to political activism in such an environment is eminently warranted.  In such an environment, politics becomes more and more about how to force your preferences on others, not about how to rationally justify them.  This becomes a worse problem - Hayek's "why the worst get on top" phrasing comes to mind - in a polity infected by statism.  The politicians in the American Framers' day were at each other's throats a lot, with lots of slander and whatnot, in spite of the philosophical inclinations of the Framers.  But the government's share of GDP was a mere fraction of what it is today, so how much damage could possibly be inflicted on a people via the levers of power?  (Demorats on their better days are fine with people acting democratically to seize wealth created by others, as long as there's "checks and balances" that include a Court selectively reading into or out of the Constitution whatever it needs to in order to justify such legalized theft; see Wickard v Filburn for one such dubious legal interpretation - of the Interstate Commerce clause, in this case, and after Court-packing threats by FDR/Demorats - with its granting of nearly a blank check to the exercise of Federal power.)

So take an intellectually bankrupt culture and a statist mentality and you have a double-whammy of toxicity that leads the political participants inexorably to hate and distrust one another, and to behave in ugly/nasty ways considered by all of them to be beyond the pale in private life.  How can this not put current political practice fundamentally at odds with intellectual honesty?  Fuck, it's like a no-brainer at this point, with an obvious no-brainer solution in sight.  Right?