Like most people I was appalled at the assassination attempt against President Trump. You can only turn the temperature up so high before someone somewhere boils over. I was also relieved when the identity of the would-be assassin was revealed. It could have been much, much worse.
There are quite a few things being said in reaction to the incident that I simply don’t understand. For some Mr. Trump’s immediate reaction, shaking his fist and shouting “Fight!” were signs of strength and determination. For others they were indications of the things they don’t like about Trump. Where you sit depends on where you stand.
I also do not believe that politicians will eschew negative advertising. Believing they will do so is naive. The reason they use negative advertising is that it works. President Biden did not suspend the campaign of negative advertising against President Trump that was about to be unleashed because he suddenly thinks that President Trump has suddenly become a good guy or because the incident has convinced him that a milder, more civil campaign is what he must do but because he and his advisors realize that a harshly negative campaign against Trump in this moment will be too sharp a contrast with the pleas for civility they’re making. I doubt that the editors of the New Republic are contrite about portraying Trump as Hitler on the cover of their magazine.
What I think is actually happening is that, if anything, this incident is revealing how hardened the battle lines have become. I’m afraid they will only become harder.
The shooting was awful. Someone died. Let’s hope it doesnt happen again. Yet, how much of this is because the political climate is worse and how much of it is just because we have become a country where everyone has guns and we shoot each other for issues as trivial as pulling in the wrong driveway or they forget to give you your order of fries?
Steve
Who knows what we will eventually find out about the shooter? Almost by definition he’s a whack job. After that? I have no idea right now.
But your second sentence is the real point. Comparisons of Trump to Hitler (and a magazine cover), threat to democracy, convicted felon (under sleazy circumstances; did anyone see a court on Friday saying HRC did same? No consequences!) dictator, serial liar etc etc. Do you know when Joe Biden is lying ? His lips are moving. Same for 90% of politicians. It makes Trumps “Sleepy Joe” look so tame, even while being juvenile and unnecessary.
Let’s not even get into the serial abuses of the legal system, politely described as lawfare.
And a last point about a totally corrupt and useless media: 20 seconds after being shot a guy stands up at his political rally and says “fight” and media thinks he’s the problem? I cannot be more polite to that attitude than “suck my coxk”.
Look. Of course the “temperature needs to be turned down” but Democrats and media need to look into the mirror. They have made it high art.
But I’m a dreamer. It won’t happen. The knives have been out for Trump since day one. Not part of the club. A reformer who might upset the gravy train. To be destroyed at all costs.
Last thought. It’s the American electorate that needs to ask questions of itself. If all you want is to be in the favored position when your pol starts handing out the candy you are the one to blame. The pol is reacting to you. From The Great Society on it’s just been grievance politics fueling free beer politics. This has to stop.
Not optimistic.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-716386
Steve
Early speculation is ill-advised, but the shooter seems to be a loner who was subject to lots of bullying. I would not be surprised if there wasn’t an primary political dimension to this, and it turned out to be more like Gabby Gifford’s shooter.
Really, Steve?
MTG? There are nut jobs in both parties. Bobert, or MTG are like the so called Squad. Not serious. That’s not the issue.
Only your party, and media (what’s the difference?) – and many, many of them – have raised the vitriol to off the charts level.
But thank you for your high school level debating tactic. If I wanted to argue like you do I would cite the 10 or so Dem Congressmen and women who wanted to eliminate SS protection for Trump. But they are whackos. I don’t play that cheap game.
You just aren’t a serious person, Steve.
Wanna trade whack job citations, Steve? It’s silly. But if you want. You will get destroyed.
https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1812553439152603625
I believe every president at least back to Clinton has been accused of being Hitler. Pretty easy to find the citations. Really, unless you kill a few million attempting to commit genocide you shouldn’t be compared to Hitler. By the same token you probably shouldn’t be quoting Hitler. Almost of the people who do these shootings are nuts, but it’s pretty easy to find “evidence” of ones that are more affiliated with the GOP or Dems. From my POV I dont think either team is innocent of vitriol. I would note that Trump has made an art form of it and many of his supporters claim to support him specifically because they think he owns the libs.
Who started it? Probably Og when they had the first tribal chief campaign back in 12,000 BC. Then if you follow US elections it’s intermittently gotten pretty nasty, like beating someone with a cane in the Congres floor nasty. For the modern era it seems to me that Gingrich played a big part in increasing the nasty but I am open to other suggestions.
(BTW, that’s a weird citation. Trump was not treated worse than Lincoln who if IIRC was actually killed at point blank range.)
Steve
What is there not to get? You have toddlers throwing tantrums, and there is no way to reason with them. They throw a bowl of shit at the wall, and what sticks is called a logical argument.
Hopefully, the Secret Service is on the ball because some nutty Democrat is likely to try to replace President Biden, and he better be wearing a double thick stab-proof vest to keep his friends from knifing him in the back.
Like I said before, a dead fish could do as well as Biden, Trump, or whomever. It’s a fucking scam to get your money, and these people do not give a shit about the country. They make mobsters look like saints.
Here is an idea: Since Trump is younger, let Biden serve one year and Trump serve the next year. Then, there will be an election to decide whose term was the best. The winner will serve the remaining, and the loser will live in a tent on the White House front lawn.
@steve
I am not sure if your first comment is applicable to this situation, but it does have merit and should be considered.
@Dave Schuler
I do not know what to tell you, and I do not know how to change it. I should never have left the Marine Corps. Everything just made sense.
Philosophy is the mother of all science, but there has been scholarly matricide. The “soft sciences” are properly branches of philosophy. The political philosopher became ashamed and was reborn as a political scientist, little more than a pollster – disgusting, vile, filth.
Sorry. This is why I rarely hit the Submit button.
It is not just reason and logical arguments, but nobody is willing to attempt to falsify their beliefs. To do so is heresy, and one must become a hermit to attempt such an endeavor.
The one area I should re-examine is AGW, but that means thermodynamics. I HATE thermodynamics, and on most days, my brain or hands do not work.
Hopefully, our youngest commenter realizes that this is all bullshit, and both parties are in on it, together. It is a scam, and once we are gone, his generation will pay for it.
Briggs has an essay on stochastic violence, and how opinion makers create the conditions for assassination and violence:
https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/52441/
The main question to me is, How and why did the FBI have a DNA sample from Crooks on file? When, where, and how did they get it?
Along with the pathetically lax security, which allowed Crooks to get within 130 yards of Trump, there is the issue of why the Secret Service agents stood Trump up and put him on display for another shot. The incident smells of government agency involvement.
Society runs shared solutions.
Shared solutions arise from arguments.
Arguments run on shared premises.
Social Media stovepiping obliterates shared premises.
If argument is to help us, we as a society need a non-expert, foolproof method of rediscovering shared premises.
I’m building that now.
(Brain has solved, writeup is progressing)
But having a method is only one-third the battle, yes?
Joint problem-solving through effective argument is a tactic, not a strategy. Nor is it a logistical supply line.
In order to acquire a grand strategic vision, you also must point the method at something useful.
IMHO, that “something useful” is universals of human decision-making (which the internet, in all its wondrous fractured ways, has backhandedly revealed to us. I find this deliciously ironic).
Applying that strategic vision to the world around us tells us that, yes, of course, societal politics is “rigged,” in the sense that it consists of stable dynamical attractors that take us to locally stable optima (or minima), over and over again, with tedious repetition.
But it also tells us (1) THAT higher optima exist, (2) how we can get ourselves from here to there using the tools at hand, and (3) how to enlist others in the service of that goal, even the currently powerful, by offering them a better alternative to the present conditions.
Together, the three sections:
Tactics/Method (argument)
Strategy/Vision (I am Hari Seldon)
Logistics/Action (“boots on the ground” heuristics)
hang together in a much more satisfyingly coherent way, than does the mere tactical possibility of successful argument alone.
If I were rich, I’d hire a ghostwriter.
Instead, it’s just me, sorry.
Shared premises are very, very limited when 20% of the population is foreign-born.
Think “Tower of Babel”.
Agreed! Take that as a shared premise, and work from there.
(the gist, badly, of the incipient writeup)
Argument (joint Rationality) and Reason (solo Rationality) work from left to right: Premises > Logic/evidence > Conclusion.
Unfortunately, Debate (combat Rationality) attacks in all directions.
So, to defuse a Debate (that is, transform it into a productive Argument), you need a way of defending (that is, joint problem-solving) in all directions.
Drilling DOWN gets you into checking facts & hard evidence.
Drilling BACK (left) gets you into checking logic.
Drilling UP gets you into big-picture frames.
And, of course, Arguing RIGHT moves the ball forward together.
Knowing how to move in any direction (the point of the writeup), rather than insisting on a favorite one, is what gets you to shared premises.
(For example, moving UP and RIGHT “If we accept that, then this is what will happen. do you want that, or shall we find something better?” counters a move DOWN “my facts say this, and I’m not budging” AND acts as an invitation to move UP and LEFT instead (let’s broaden this until we agree what we are even talking about)
Having already pointed the above method at human decision-making, as I have, to discover its hidden universals (chicken-and-egg problem, I know, sorry) is what gets you the confidence that my proposed method will succeed.
(Bearing in mind, that a consensus view that “existential violence is the only possible solution” is always available as a default (see Palestine’s successful persuasion of the Israelis), which is why we are looking for better, more hopeful alternatives)
As I said, badly wrritten gist.
But I think I can illustrate it to better effect, with chains of midwit memes.
Field Equations for expanding the utility of Argument from the special case of already-shared premises, to the modern environment, where everything in in flux
(except the one-two invariant punch of the Field Equations, and the universal mechanics of human decision-making)
What can I say? I’m a cellist. Strauss’s Don Quixote is my spirit animal.
Thank you, Dave et al, for the opportunity to think out loud.
@Piercello
An argument is a logical construct of a debate. It consists of definitions, terms, and concepts which are agreed upon, but the premises are not. Usually, the logic flows from those elements.
It is algebra. There is no need for this fallacy nonsense.
So, one person proposes that God exists (premis), and the other proposes the opposite (premis). There would need to be other premises. Some may need to be added as the debate progresses, but as long as they follow the agreed upon definitions, terms, and concepts, it is not a problem, usually.
Today, nobody knows what definitions, terms, concepts, proposals, premises, arguments, debates, or logic are. They have read some political pundit, a number set transformed into a picture, and seen the Wikipedia page about logical fallacies.
I have no idea of what people mean by “facts”. I am guessing a number set transformed into a picture, but who knows. I am (or was) fluent in three different number bases, but I do not think any are taught any more. In any case, 10 represents three separate values, but that is just for me.
The point is that very few people understand how to form a logical argument, and therefore, they can do nothing more than shout at each other. They are on the level of cavemen/women. You need to teach them how to reason, first.
Reason is unimpassioned. So, appealing to the emotions is the wrong way to go. Reason is more like a game, and this is why you may be able to appeal to the youngest generations – think Lewis Carroll.
I think that you are trying to create a graduate level course for toddlers. At best, they will misunderstand it and twist it into something you will not recognize. If you persist, create a picture book with lots of numbers and graphs.
I meant to go into the similarities between a proper argument and proper engineering.
It’s definitely a Humpty Dumpty world out there.
In more ways than one. For information they rely on kahunas. They call them “influencers” now.
@Tasty,
I like to count multimeasure orchestral rests in binary, so that one hand gives me 31 unique shapes. Less chance of accidentally dropping /adding a set of 5 measures that way.
My standpartners think I am strange. But truly, they have no Idea HOW strange…
The fun thing about definitions, these days, is that everyone brings their own. If the dictionary was the Tower of Babel, it has already been destroyed by the internet, which has already hardened, shattered, and scattered Meaning to the four Winds.
So whatever words I use will be wrong. Guaranteed!
In my case, this actually helps.
Why? Because I needed a way of disambiguating certain stuck aspects of “argument” that I think are structurally significant, but that are otherwise hard to disentangle within whatever passes for standard usage.
Now I have the freedom to make and defend my own word choices.
(I find this both useful and maddening, but (again as a musician) I may be uniquely well-equipped to pull it off.)
The key to taliking about these things, just like talking about music, is that the underlying wordless structures I have in mind (1) are invariant, (2) are universal, (3) are self-evident upon exploration, and, perhaps most importantly, (4) exist independently of whatever words we use to talk about them.
People will be able to check for themselves.
One of those structural aspects (that is obvious in retrospect) is that lots of people are quite good at coming up with “reasons,” but not at all good at negotiating past differences in those personally supplied reasons.
I thiink this was always true, and the internet has just made it vastly more obvious.
But, you’ll note this still gives us a vastly more hopeful take than “everyone who disagrees with me is an unreasoning moron!” A path exists for pulling these reasoning skills onto the same page.
The challenge, then, is to articulate the deep logical structure of what I have in mind (for the thinkers out there, so that it’s robustness can be verified), AND THEN ALSO reduce its outputs to stupid-simple bullet points even dumber than political slogans, so that the masses can use it. As GEICO would have it, “So easy, a Caveman can use it!”
It has to have both! BUT, I cannot do both at the same time. So the logic comes first.
If all you’ve got is broken eggs, why not try and make an omelette?
Humpty Dumpty is probably past caring at this point.
As a palate cleanser, some wonderfully Vaudeville-ian conducting of Candide:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJU0lC3iHaY
@Piercello
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) was making a point about logic. If words mean whatever you want them to, then they mean nothing. If you have never read The Hunting of the Snark, you should. It is intentionally nonsense, but it is still logical.
In the past, words identified concepts, but for the past 100 years, they have been separated. If this were not bad enough, words now identify concepts that have no relationship between either,
Because reason and logic are not taught, there is no way to explain this. (You may not understand, and if so, I apologize.)
Concepts are like the foundation of a building. Without a solid footing, the building will sink. Bridges (truss) with those steel beams across the top are not for show. They carry the weight back to the pillars which need solid footings.
I would suggest not crossing a bridge made with beams made of plastic. Even if you call it steel, it is not steel. It matters. Steel is a concept not a word, and separating the two can be deadly.
Up until the last ten years, I attempted to falsify everything I believed. In most arguments, I had to formulate my opponent’s argument because I knew more about the subject matter. The best was when my formulation was used against me as if it were original.
I do not know much about music, but I guess concepts would equate to notes. If C-sharp meant something different to everybody, there would be no point to writing down music.
Thinking about it some more, it might not be that hard, but you would need to start with high school or collage. They would take two – four semesters of philosophy, physics, music, and arts, or some combination of others.
The courses would need to be coordinated and agnostic. The intention is to lay a foundation. Engineers are taught Newtonian Mechanics, but as Einstein proved, gravity is not a force. It does not matter. Using Newtonian Mechanics, a properly designed and built bridge will stand.
Anyway, I wish you the best.
*tips cap* Thank you!
At minimum, it is a MOST interesting translation problem. I suspect we are not even in disagreement, just using words at cross-purposes.
We’ll see how it goes.
If it helps, I’ve remembered where I parked a relevant argument:
https://piercello.substack.com/p/the-universal-shape-of-learning