DocWatts

@Elliott Insiders are saying that Republican Senators and reps are scared shitless of threats of violence from MAGA extremists if they break ranks with Trump. Lest we forget, MAGA has already tried to kill several of our elected representives, including Mike Pence and the Governor of my home state. Moreover, thanks to the hostile takeover and subsequent politicization of the FBI by MAGA extremists, they won't be trying to stop these attacks on our elected officials (or the public, for that matter). https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/trump-congress-political-violence

Given how ham-fisted and blatant these moves are, you may be right, but the only way that happens is by a sustained public pressure campaign on these legislators from members of the public. In short - call your senators, even your Republican ones, tell them that you expect them to uphold the Rule of Law, and not cede their constitutional authority to Elon Musk and Donald Trump. (Ie, "Senator [name], I voted for you to represent me, not Elon Musk"). Musk is the weakest link in Trump's coalition, I'd recommend pushing that angle if your representatives are Republicans.

I don't know if you live in the States, but I do. We're that fucked up - or getting there at any rate. We're in the early stages of what is known as a 'legitimacy crisis', where key political players and a sizeable minority of the country have dropped the pretense that they care about the Rule Of Law. I'm not saying this to be alarmist, no particular outcome to this crisis is inevitable, but it doesn't help anyone to pretend that any of this is normal.

Speak out loudly and boldly that a coup is happening. Grind all congressional work to a halt. Filibuster every bill that comes to the floor, refuse to nominate cabinet picks. Obstruct legislative committees. Participate in protests. In short, abandon 'business as usual' without major concessions from this regime to restore oversight and accountability. Use their legislative authority to make every action that this regime wants to take as slow and frustratingly difficult as possible.

I wish that were true - but at the end of the day Laws are ultimately just social agreements, not worth the piece of paper they're written on without enforcement. If people with the power to enforce these agreements decide that Trump's whims rather than the US Constitution is the 'law', then that becomes the lived reality, regardless of what's on the books. This is the explicit long term goal of Project 2025, by the way

This is true. But of all the federal agencies affected by this Executive Order, this is the one I'm the most concerned about. If Trump does manage to federalize elections, democracy is effectively finished, in a fairly unambiguous way. Of course this would be highly illegal and unconstitutional, but Laws only matter if there are people with power willing to enforce them. If Trump and Elon raid the Federal Elections Commission like they did the US Treasury, who is going to stop them? For all we know, Trump will issue a decree that State level election results are illegitimate if not run through his federalized FEC - what then?

We also need to demand much more from our elected officials - more of this, speaking out boldly and making it plain that they refuse to comply with fascism - and less complaints and excuses that they lack the power to stop Trump's coup because they don't have a majority in the legislature.

Thought I'd give an additional bump for Behind The Bastards podcast. Robert Evans in one of the best in the biz for deconstructing fascism in an accessible and engaging way. Also a good source for finding source material to seek out and read on your own (the book he's referencing here is 'They Thought They Were Free' by Milton Mayer).

There's wisdom in this - but I'd like to suggest that there's a middle ground between reacting to every unhinged thing that Trump's regime says and does, and sticking one's head in the sand only to be caught off guard when the economy crashes or you're unable to renew your passport. Find a way to be active and engaged, but don't let fear rule your life. On the contrary, in my experience civil resistance participation has been very empowering for staving off feelings of despair at large societal events beyond my direct control. You can explore spiritually, write philosophy, or pursue an education / career while also calling your senators, jumping onto a weekly zoom meeting with a group like Indivisible, or attending a local protest on the weekend. In other words, integrate civic participation into the rest of your life. (Doomscrolling does not count as civic participation). Take small, reasonable steps to prepare for possible civil unrest, but don't blow your life savings on prepping supplies, and don't forget to live your life in the meantime. As an aside, feel free to shoot me a message if you have any questions that you'd feel more comfortable airing in a private message rather than an open forum. I'll just reiterate that I'm advocating for sustained, legal and NONVIOLENT civic resistance - unsexy stuff like attending town halls, calling legislators, memorizing your constitutional rights, combating disinformation, attending planning and strategy meetings with groups like 50501 and Indivisible.

I recently turned an expanded version of this post into a Substack article, if folks would prefer sharing that over a forum post. Please do your part to help get this information out there, since as of Thursday at least, legacy media is largely NOT COVERING this. https://7provtruths.substack.com/p/a-dictatorial-coup-is-taking-place

I'm creating this thread as Public Service Announcement about political developments within the United States, for folks who either don't live here or have tuned out of politics in the weeks and months following the election. This thread wasn't created for argument or debate - any comments to that effect won't be responded to. I felt compelled to create this thread because we're in an incredibly dangerous moment right now, and traditional news media (CNN, The Associated Press, etc) is failing to convey the gravity of recent political developments. I'm also asking actualizers here who live in the States to pay attention to what's going on, and to take action. (Thanks to 50501 for this post on the night of the coup, some of which I’ll be quoting verbatim. I’m less interested in precise accreditation right now than I am with getting this information out there). _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ What's Going On In The United States Right Now? (Short Version) In short, the US is currently in a Constitutional Crisis. Since taking office, Donald Trump and his Project 2025 backers have been aggressively testing the waters to see what types of dictatorial actions they can get away with. Since taking office, Donald Trump has been abusing Executive Orders to consolidate unprecedented power under the Executive Branch. The unambiguous intent of these executive orders is to do away with the Constitutional checks and balances that prevents one person, such as a president, from amassing unchecked power. To that end, Trump has been using Executive Orders to appropriate the Constitutional Authority of Congress to draft laws and control spending. And he's been attempting to usurp the ability to the Courts to interpret the Constitutionality of laws. Executive Orders are NOT laws. They cannot be used to overturn Constitutional Amendments (such as birthright citizenship), or the shut down federal departments (such as the Department Of Education). Nor can they be used to override or 'veto' spending that's been approved by Congress. Trump has been using Executive Orders to do all three, in clear violation of the law and the US Constitution, out of a belief that no one is able or willing to stop him. Elon Musk, an unelected private citizen without any security clearances, broke into the highly sensitive US Treasury system, which controls $6 trillion of federal spending, and now likely has access to the Social Security Numbers and bank account information of every US taxpayer, in the biggest data breach in human history. What's Changed Within The Last 24 Hours? (As Of 2/19/2025). The White House just announced an unprecedented executive power grab, stripping independent governmental agencies of their autonomy. This order gives the President direct control over all regulatory bodies, allowing them to manipulate financial markets, elections, environmental policies, and legal interpretations. Agencies must now obey White House directives or face defunding. This Executive Order effectively ends independent oversight of the U.S. government. It cements total presidential control over regulatory agencies, giving Trump unchecked authority over financial markets, elections, environmental protections, and the legal system itself. WHAT THIS ORDER DOES: Eliminates Agency Independence: Agencies like the SEC, FCC, and FEC, which were designed to operate without direct political interference, are now forced to follow White House directives. This means the President can directly control stock market regulations, elections, and antitrust enforcement. Weaponizes the Budget: The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) can now block or redirect funding to agencies based on their political compliance. Agencies that resist will be defunded into submission. Mandates Legal Loyalty: All federal employees must now follow the President’s interpretation of the law, no independent legal assessments are allowed. The President’s word is now the law. Enforces Direct Oversight: A White House Liaison will be placed in every agency to ensure complete political obedience. No agency will be able to act without direct presidential approval. ( Source: WH Announces Massive Power Grab Through Executive Orders, Our Enabling Act Moment of Germany 1933 is HERE. ) The cumulative effect of this order is to give Trump and his Project 2025 backers dictatorial control over most US governmental agencies. You can read the Executive Order for yourself here - while the White House is pitching this as ‘restoring a government that responds the American people’, don’t be fooled. This is a naked power grab that has no basis in our laws or our Constitution. It would give Trump unchecked power to rule by decree like a King, gutting the Constitutional checks and balances that were designed to prevent exactly this outcome. Why This Is Incredibly Dangerous, And Why This Is A Coup In 1933, Hitler passed the Enabling Act, effectively dismantling Germany’s democracy and centralizing all government power under his rule. This executive order is a direct parallel, it removes the last barriers to total executive control and allows Trump to govern by decree. ( Source: WH Announces Massive Power Grab Through Executive Orders, Our Enabling Act Moment of Germany 1933 is HERE. ) If we do not resist immediately, this will be the final step in dismantling American democracy. The checks and balances that kept the presidency in check are GONE. The term for what is happening right now is an Auto-Coup (also called a Self-Coup) - where a leader or administration comes to power legally, and then uses illegal and unconstitutional actions to stay in power. What We Should Be Doing Right Now First and foremost, spread the word that this happening - legacy news media has largely NOT BEEN COVERING this. And when they have, it's not been with the urgency that's appropriate to what's happening. For the most part, they've been obeying in advance out of fear that they'll be penalized or shut down by a more repressive government. If you live in the United States, you need to be contacting your representatives. Flood their offices with calls, emails, and visits demanding immediate legislative action to block this power grab. Here's a simple script you can use to contact your representatives: SCRIPT: Hi, my name is [name] , and I’m a constituent from [city and zip code]. I’m calling to urge Senator [name] to take immediate action against the White House’s latest executive order, issued on Feb 18th, which strips federal agencies of their autonomy and centralizes unchecked power under the President. This order effectively ends independent oversight of the US government, giving Trump dictatorial control over markets, elections, environmental protections, and the legal system at his will. This is an unconstitutional power grab with no precedent in modern U.S. history. I urge the Senator to use every tool available — publicly denounce this, rally opposition, and block its implementation by any means necessary. The Democratic Party must act like a true opposition party before it's too late. Please do everything in your power to stop this. Thank you for your time. Back organizations such as the ACLU that are preparing legal battles to obstruct Trump's coup. If you're able to, consider joining in a protest. There's a reason that this latest executive order was signed late at night when most of the country was asleep. The more public pushback this gets, the longer and more difficult it will be for Trump to dismantle what remains of our democracy. Here are some organizations that organizing nationwide and state-level protests: #50501, RefuseFascism.org, Indivisible.org Follow organizations like 50501 on social media to stay informed, which are working to build a sustained non-violent resistance to fascism in the United States. I’d also highly recommend Parkrose Permaculture’s channel on YouTube. Call for and support organizations that are facilitating NON-VIOLENT resistance. Empirical studies have shown that nonviolence is much more effective at successfully challenging authoritarian regimes than violent resistance, and leads to more stable and democratic outcomes afterwards. To that end, I’d recommend Erica Chenoweth’s work, who has written about this at length.

@Leo Gura I imagine that a poll would be more precise - but I do not have kids (I'm 37 if that's at all relevant or helpful). As an aside, I'm genuinely baffled as to how anyone in the United States who's not in the top quarter or so of the income bracket can afford to have kids. Not an antinatalist by any means, but I would pause to consider the ethics of bringing a kid into the social upheaval we're likely to experience over the next few decades - between a collapsing middle class, a global resurgence of fascism, and the chaos of accelerating climate change, my expectation is for things to get much worse before they get better.

Thanks! This is actually a subsection from a book chapter that explores the epistemology of science (and conceptual knowledge more broadly) - how science helps us discern relevance patterns beyond everyday observational reasoning, the role and purpose of conceptual models, the constructed nature of subject-object dualism, our evolving archetypes of 'realness' and our emotional attachment to an absolute ground for knowledge, and the performative contradiction Scientific Realism. I've been posting little snippets here and there. This is part of a chapter called 'Categories Are Always Contextual.' Been an interesting challenge to try to present somewhat self-contained snippets from a more cohesive work that builds to advanced epistemological insights - I imagine you've run into some of that as well with your content.

Greetings and happy holidays! Thought that I might share a write-up for my philosophy book, the explores the metaphysical assumptions behind Scientific Realism. _______________________________________________________________________ Parting The Veil Of Scientific Realism In the Los Angeles County Museum of Art hangs a deliciously subversive 1929 painting called ‘The Treachery Of Images’ by René Magritte. At a glance, the piece is unassuming enough - just an ordinary tobacco pipe set against an empty beige background - hardly the type of composition to turn heads when set against the museum’s masterworks. So why did this piece cause a fuss among art critics when it first appeared? And how does it continue to rub people the wrong way a century later? Well, there's one other detail about this painting we've yet to mention. Just below the pipe is a meticulously lettered declaration, written in French: 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe' - 'This is not a pipe.’ Thus does the aforementioned ‘treachery’ fall into place. Little wonder that critics bristled at the provocation, which had all the subtlety of a slap to the face. No one likes admitting they’ve been deceived, especially by something that feels like a joke at our expense. Nor do we appreciate being disabused of our comfortable illusions - all the more when the rug puller seems to take pleasure in the act. While ‘Treachery’ is more brazen about it than most, such fourth-wall breaks have a long history. Like Cerventes stepping into the tale of Don Quixote to remind us that we’re not living out grand adventures but reading a book, the medium is the message here. In an age where metatextual commentary is a well-worn trope of popular media - from stand-up comedy to comic book films to memes - we might be tempted to write off this century-old painting as the equivalent of an internet shitpost and leave it at that. Yet beneath its banal presentation, 'The Treachery Of Images' is deceptively simple - a philosophical sleight of hand that cuts to an epistemic truth that’s as fundamental as it’s easy to miss. Much like the parable of the fish who’s oblivious to the water he swims in, we’re habitually oblivious to the constructed nature of our abstractions. Over time, we forget that they’re abstractions at all, and our scientific models are no exception to this. And here we arrive at the heart of the matter, which brings us full circle to our orienting metaphor: the model is not the manifestation. Like a plastic airplane on our desk, models serve us best when we remember that they’re impressions of Reality, created for a specific purpose - not Reality itself. Would you try to eat a picture of an apple? Drive a blueprint? Travel to a simulated city? This isn’t mere wordplay - it cuts to the category error inherent to Scientific Realism. A category error is a logical fallacy that occurs when we mistake one kind of thing (a model or representation) for something altogether different in kind (the reality it represents). When Margitte states that ‘this is not a pipe’, it’s exactly this distinction that he’s highlighting. The fallacy of Scientific Realism isn’t intrinsic to scientific inquiry itself - it stems from how we overextend its successes. Our habitual grasping for an absolute ground upon which our knowledge can safely rest can lead us to extend these models into ontological domains that lie beyond their explanatory reach. Science constructs predictive models of natural phenomena, but it’s not a shortcut for the embodied familiarity with the world that makes those models meaningful. It excels at precise mechanistic investigation, but raw data isn’t a replacement for the interpretive lens through which we transform information into understanding. It can tell us how things behave, but it’s not the arbiter of what things ultimately are - since ‘things’ are constructed distinctions, not fixed features of a mind-independent Reality. The takeaway? In spite of its considerable explanatory power, science doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Its usefulness comes from its integration with the Life-World - that shared, experiential world which serves as our primary ‘Reality’, long before we start theorizing about it. It’s this Life-World, in all of its visceral immediacy - with its pleasures and sorrows, its mysteries and mundanity, its straightforwardness and complexity - that science is downstream from. By this point, an astute reader may have picked up on a seeming contradiction, stemming from our account that knowledge lacks an absolute ground. By emphasizing the primacy of this Life-World, aren't we falling into the same performative contradiction that we criticized earlier, substituting one absolute ground for another? The distinction here is subtle but decisive. The difference lies in how the Life-World isn't some hidden metaphysical domain behind appearances - this isn't Plato's Realm of Forms repackaged or 'The Matrix' with a fresh coat of paint. Rather, the Life-World and the material reality that science investigates are mutually constitutive - like how hot and cold aren’t isolated properties, but give meaning to one another. The Life-World is the canvas for our lived experience, yet this canvas itself is shaped by the material reality it presents. There is no absolute ground here - trying to find one would be like searching for the ‘true’ pole of temperature in either hot or cold. So why even bring it up then if the Life-World isn’t some privileged vantage point for what’s ultimately ‘real’? Because when we neglect our access point to Reality, we stumble into the fallacy of treating our constructed distinctions as ‘more real’ than the embodied experience they’re meant to illuminate. Thus does the veil of Scientific Realism blind us to the lived context that gives our models meaning. A vivid case study for how these two poles - the Life-World and material reality - arise together and give meaning to one another can be found in how color is disclosed to us. Here we find a powerful demonstration of the folly inherent to Scientific Realism, in treating physical properties as the ‘true reality’ behind appearances. When we treat ‘mind’ and ‘world’ or ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ as absolutes rather than constructed abstractions, we tend to miss how our everyday world is seamlessly given before our distinctions divide it. The sweeping tango between these two poles is central for how our minds construct color - yes, color is constructed, it’s not an inherent property of objects. At a glance this might seem counterintuitive, but recall our earlier point that ‘constructed’ does not mean imaginary! Just as a concert emerges from the resonance of performer, venue, and audience, color emerges from the interplay of mind, body, and environment. Color isn’t ‘out there’ in some mind-independent Reality, but neither is it an independent fabrication of the mind. Is color a property? Yes, but not in the way that mass and charge are properties of atoms. So if color isn’t a physical property and it’s not purely mental, then what is this taken-for-granted chimera? It’s an interactional property that we enact through our embeddedness in the world. This brings us back to our earlier discussion of relevance realization - how living minds filter and prioritize information from their environment, based on what matters for their survival and flourishing. Crucially, the bulk of relevance realization isn’t a conscious ‘choice’. When we make a conscious decision to prioritize one thing over another, this is but the tip of a much larger iceberg that’s largely hidden from view. Instead, the bulk of relevance realization is largely pre-reflective and automatic - a consequence of how the world is disclosed to us due to our physiology and past experiences, long before conceptual awareness enters into the picture. When it comes to our perception of color, we can see how this process shapes our construction of categories in a fundamental way. We don’t perceive the electromagnetic spectrum in its raw form - this would be overwhelming and largely useless to us. Color perception interacts with only a small portion, which science has termed ‘visible light’. And even within this minute slice of the electromagnetic spectrum, color vision isn’t a replication of this territory. It’s more akin to a highly involved form of curation, that’s tightly coupled to our needs and capacities. Our perceptual system doesn’t retrieve pre-existing boundaries in nature - it actively creates those boundaries through the dynamic coupling of mind, body, and world. To understand this interplay between mind, body, and world, let's look at what science tells us about color - and where it leaves holes that can’t be fully probed by its methodological tools alone. Consider the color ‘red’ - science can precisely model the wavelengths of light that evoke this perceptual experience. Through mechanistic investigation, it can describe how light enters our eye through our cornea, is focused by our lens, and reaches specialized photoreceptors in our retina. From here, it can tell us how these cone cells convert light into electrical signals that travel via the optic nerve to our brain, and map out the neural pathways that process this information. While these investigative insights are hard-won and essential for an understanding of color, an ‘outside-in’ vantage point can only get us so far. No amount of scientific data can fully capture what it’s like to see a ripe strawberry that’s very, very red. If we’re describing this experience to someone without vision, we can explain its mechanics, we can try analogizing it to other senses - but something essential about seeing red remains stubbornly ineffable. Just as something is lost when we transcribe a song to lyrics on a page, or when we have to explain the punchline of a joke, color must be experienced to be understood. In sum, while lived experience is irreducible to mechanistic explanation, science has an prominent role to play in how we reflect upon this experience. Science and the Life-World aren’t opposed to one another - they’re two sides of the same coin, standing in a relationship of mutual illumination. Just as it’s nonsensical to ask whether our coin is ‘really’ heads or tails, neither science nor the Life-World should be treated as an absolute ground. Which of these two sides we choose to prioritize in our attempts to make sense of the world has everything to do with what we’re trying to understand. Moreover, both halves of the coin have much to gain by being in dialogue with one another. Scientific inquiry benefits from the knowledge that its theoretical constructs aren’t an approximation of a ‘view from nowhere’, but are a reflection of our embodied experience within the Life-World. On the flip side, our navigation of the Life-World is enriched by how science grounds our assumptions in verifiable realities and extends our understanding beyond the immediacy of our direct experience. This brings us to a deeper truth about the nature of understanding itself. Every perspective, whether scientific or experiential, both reveals certain aspects of Reality while necessarily obscuring others. Consider the parable of blindfolded people touching different parts of an elephant - its trunk, its tusk, its ear, and its tail - and coming to widely different conclusions about what they’re examining. Like these blindfolded observers, each of our vantage points comes with its own insights and limitations. As we’ll discover in the next chapter, this isn’t a ‘flaw’ of human reasoning that can be neatly excised by adopting progressively larger viewpoints. So-called ‘theories of everything’, while useful for getting a rough lay of the land, aren’t a shortcut around this limitation. As we zoom out to a larger field-of-view, we take in more of the territory but also lose essential detail. And as we’ve just seen, recourse to an absolute ground is another dead-end - for there’s no final arbiter for what’s ultimately ‘real’ that can transcend our human perspective within Reality. The path forward isn’t to chase an impossible ‘view from nowhere’, but to understand how these different vantage points can complement and enrich one another. Just as the blindfolded observers would gain a fuller picture by sharing their experiences rather than arguing about whose view is ‘really real’, we make progress by bringing our diverse perspectives into good-faith dialogue. Yet this openness to multiple viewpoints must also come with the recognition that not every perspective deserves a seat at the table. Some perspectives are grounded in bad faith, intellectual dishonesty, or the willful denial of verifiable realities. We need not lose sleep over excluding Nazis from weighing in on public discussions about the Holocaust, nor do fossil fuel companies need to be given additional opportunities to spread climate change denial. Learning how to parse this difference between legitimate disagreement and willful distortion will be crucial as we navigate the challenges ahead. Moving forward, we’ll examine how the inherent partiality of perspectives isn’t a bug but an essential feature of our sensemaking frameworks. Coming to grips with this partiality will help us thread a more constructive course between rigid absolutism and inconsistent relativism. Rather than seeing this partiality as a problem to be solved, we’ll discover how to leverage it to develop more nuanced and adaptable ways of understanding.

Haven't heard of it, thanks for the recommendation though!