DocWatts

You're failing to understand or imagine how much worse things can get. It's a bit like someone in early 1930s Germany imagining that whatever the future holds, surely the political situation in Germany couldn't get any worse than things were under the Kaiser.

Agreed. A charismatic vice president on the ticket could help the Dem's chances, though I'll be honest it's not looking good.

Problem is that a 'moderate take' on Trump basically necessitates downplaying or excusing his calls to political violence and his bevy of illegal behavior. There's no world where the Jan 6 insurrection and Project 2025's plan to turn America into a Christian theocracy 'aren't a big deal'. Conservatives who reject MAGA extremism are welcome here.

I agree with Lichtman that if Biden's dropping out, he should also resign the presidency for health reasons, giving Kamala the incumbency. Then work like hell to unite the party behind her.

Alan Lichtman has been stressing this exact point, and IMHO he's %100 right.

Kamala pretty much has to become the nominee, since she's the only one who's legally entitled to the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been raised for the Biden campaign. Moreover, holding a primary at this late stage in the game all but guaranties a bevy of lawsuits from the Republican Party, where there's a good possibility that the election gets decided by the MAGA Supreme Court. Also, as AOC pointed out, people think this election is November - when in actuality, it's in September, since that's when the first mail in ballots need to be finalized. If someone has information that I don't I would be open to changing my opinion, but beyond it being a terrible move strategically, it would be pretty much logistically impossible to hold an open primary at this late stage.

@integral Thanks! Thought it might be fun to do a chicken crossing the road scenario for the embodied phenomenology book I'm writing : Enactivism The road is an interactional category that's created and sustained by the chicken's mind, intelligible for the chicken because of its embodied experiences within the world.

I welcome conservatives who are principled enough to call MAGA out on its flagrant corruption and hypocrisy. Not making excuses for Trump, or downplaying the existential threat that Project 2025 and the Christian Nationalists pose to American democracy is the low bar I would expect someone to clear for a Conscious Politics forum. Preserving US democracy takes precedent over any other differences we may have.

I'd recommend 'How Civil Wars Start: And How To Stop Them' by Barbara F Walter for a thorough survey of civil wars in the 21st century. Which goes into how they start, what they look like once they happen, and how they can be prevented.

So basically a 21st century version of Jim Crow, sanitized to be more palatable for normies then? Seems like modern authoritarians have figured out that the best thing way to stay in power is to be less overt in their oppression than thier 20th century counterparts.

Would love further elaboration on Object-Oriented-Ontology and Speculative Realism - as they're two perspectives I've yet to dive into very deeply.

Most level headed take I've seen on the topic so far. (I'm sure the immature online Left via TYT and the like will rake her over the coals for this highly reasonable take).

I'll share something I posted elsewhere, because a quick an overview of the Banality of Evil is highly relevant for our current moment: "[They] did not know before 1933 that Nazism was evil. They did not know between 1933 and 1945 that it was evil. And they do not know it now [in 1946].” ― Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45' In Weimer Germany's last free elections, not everyone casting ballots for the Nazis would have described themselves as a Nazi, and a lot of them didn't have any particular animosity towards Jewish people. What was far more common was that folks saw some personal advantage to throwing their lot in with vengeful nationalists, and were willing to downplay and excuse the monstrous things that Hitler and the Nazis were saying and doing at the time - just as people today are willing to downplay Trump's violent hateful rhetoric, his numerous crimes, the January 6th insurrection, and the Republican Party's ongoing coup attempt. Likewise, the vast majority of Trump supporters don't think of themselves as fascist enablers, but what they fail to recognize is that today's fascism couches itself in traditional American values, weaponized against out-groups within American society - just as Nazi fascism marketed itself in traditional German values, weaponized against the out-groups of its day.

Thank you, Leo - been disappointing to see so many low quality takes on what's supposed to be a Conscious Politics Forum, especially considering the gravity of ongoing events.

These are great! As someone writing a book on the topic, I got a chuckle out of the Heidegger one. Of course, I'd say the road is more 'ready-to-beak' for our chicken. 😆 Also, not sure if you managed to compile this from pre-existing knowledge of all of these different ontologies, but if you did colour me impressed.

She's a sitting member of the House of Representatives who has personal experience and expertise with these matters. And she's obviously approaching this issue from a place of good faith, IMHO. I'm going to value her opinion on these matters far more than media personalities who've been reacting to unfolding events with fly-by-the-seat-of-thier-pants sensationalism. If somehow you have more knowledge and firsthand experience on these matters than AOC, I'd love to hear how you managed to do so.

Excellent vid from AOC with a reality check on replacing Biden at the 11th hour.

It's hard to say whether this is the right call or not, since keeping Biden in and replacing him 4 months before the election both carry quite a lot of risk. If they do replace him, the Dems need to unite behind his replacement to have any chance of winning - and they need to do it fast. A drawn or contested primary will almost certainly be handing Trump the presidency. Realistically though, Kamala Harris would pretty much have to be the replacement. Because she was part of the Biden administration, she's the only candidate who has legal access to the millions in campaign funding that the Democratic Party has raised for Biden. If Biden is dropping out, he should resign the presidency as well for health reasons, and spend the next four months uniting the party behind Harris. A strong VP pick like Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, or Bernie Sanders could help, but there's close to zero chance that they'll be at the top of the ticket. On a tangential note - I'm still scratching my head as to how Trump supporters manage to find thier way to a conscious politics forum, and that they expect their posts to be taken seriously...

Well, if I am wrong, then it's business as usual and nothing im actually advocating for is harmful. Which is for more mindful, compassionate, and above all informed participation in the democratic process.Taking a disinterested or detached view of politics when our democracy is rotting from within due to apathy and neglect is none of those things. It's the equivalent of a crowd of people standing by and watching as someone gets assaulted on a crowded street, due to the bystander effect. If anything, I'm challenging people to take on more personal responsibility for the collective problems that we're facing.

Leo, myself, and others who are sounding the alarm bells about Project 2025 and a second Trump presidency are treating current events with a level of seriousness that's completely appropriate, given the situation. America is on the cusp of losing its democracy, with the potential to backslide into the type of authoritarian regime that people have historically immigrated to the United States to escape. Stop treating this as an abstraction. It's happening, it's real, and it will ruin many lives if it comes to fruition.

Add to that that the current Supreme Court is the most corrupt one in United States history, and not just Trump but the entirety of the Republican Party has completely abandoned democratic norms, and further democratic backsliding is a near certainty by this point. The question at this point is how much of our democracy we'll be able to salvage from all this.

For starters, the parallels between Trump's coup attempt on Jan 6 and Hitler's Beerhall Putsch are fairly obvious to anyone who's studied the history of Nazi Germany. https://www.courthousenews.com/how-long-has-this-been-going-on/

The Dictator's Handbook is very highly recommended. Very useful for understanding the real world incentives and pressures that shape the behavior of people in positions of political power. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11612989-the-dictator-s-handbook

I don't have strong opinions one way or the other on Destiny, but hard agree on this point. I read a book earlier this year about preventing 'moderate apocalypses', and the author aptly described what were living through now as a 'stupid, mundane version of a societal collapse'.

Looks like Trump chose a real winner of a VP. Imagine any pre-Trump VP comparing thier running mate to Hitler