@Teri_Kanefield: In one of your recent blog posts (I don't recall which one off the top of my head), you mentioned that in times of stress, some normally democratically-leaning people adopt authoritarian practices, particularly when they don't understand the nuances of a given situation that frustrates them.

Also as you've said numerous times, the only way to strengthen democracy is with more democracy, not by abandoning it and adopting authoritarian tactics.

This is going to be an interesting year, but boy it would be nice to have a boring one again someday.

@Teri_Kanefield
I've always thought of opposition to be a feature of democracy rather than a bug.

When we remodeled our kitchen everyone in our family had fierce opposing opinions on which material to use for the countertops. It was utterly ridiculous, and slowly we collectively came to a general agreement. In the end we all agreed the process lead us to create a more perfect kitchen. 😀

@Teri_Kanefield I appreciate all the work you have done and especially for introducing me to Learned Hand. I have only read his Wiki bio and I want to learn more.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_Hand

@Teri_Kanefield I'm sorry, but I'm disagreeing with you, but not at *what* you're saying,
rather at *what level* you're thinking reality is happening-from...

Please, please, *please*, read Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking Fast & Slow", soon, as it is perhaps the most important psychology-book in the entire world, right now.

That democracy doesn't, & never-has, meant what we nowadays call "democracy" is a separate issue, see below, this Kahneman stuff is more important AND more urgent...

---

Right now, humankind's industry/technology & population-saturation ( no raw Nature left to expand-into, when we butcher Nature locally ), means that the ecology, both terrestrial & marine, is being butchered, at planet-scale.

The climate has been butchered, and a #ClimatePunctuation has been activated, but it is unlike any in history: MUCH more sudden than any other from terrestrial causes.

Political & assumption-river/religion motivated ideology-addiction/prejudice-addiction is trying to enforce its totalitarian dominion...

What *really* is going-on?

Kahneman System-1 *is trying to displace Kahneman System-2 from having any validity/authority, world-wide*.

Animal-reaction, programmed/conditioned-reaction, is trying to displace considered-reason from interfering with animal-reaction's totalitarian planet-wide dominion.

*It doesn't matter* whether the conditioned-"instinct" is Republican, or Putinist, or Zionist, or Hamasist, or Boko Haram, or Evangelist, or "Buddhist" genocider of Tamils, or "Atheist" fundamentalist, *it doesn't matter which makeup is the System-1's "appearance" or "look",
.. because it isn't this-ideology-must-be-right .. that is the FUNDAMENTAL problem*!!

It is, rather, that System-1 is working to *displace* System-2.

Much deeper.

All the people who ignore evidence,
.. left, right, Abrahamic-religion, or Dharmic-religion, or Antitheist, or Atheist, or Moneyarchist, or Legalist, or Class-system-worshipper, or Authority-worshipper...

*that's just makeup* on the appearances:
that *isn't* the fundamental wrong-function...

Humanity *used to* live in a world where System-1's dominion *could* be survived.

Until the Industrial Revolutions began.

Thanks to technology's multiplying of consequences, that isn't true, any longer...

Please read Kahneman's book & understand, & see all the oceanic evidence all around us...

The Great Filter *isn't* this-ideology vs that-ideology,
The Great Filter is ideologically-programmed-animal-reaction vs considered-reason,
& animal-reaction ( via the brilliant remapping of Leninism from "proletariat dictatorship" to "populist dictatorship", and from "education" to TV pushed programming, the Right proving to be the most-effective Leninists in history, through Murdoch's empire )

... and conditioned-animal-reaction *has the vast majority of the world's population in its possession*, now,
and is gaining more & more & more each month.

Why is it that so many diverse factions, left & right, are against competent public education?

Because it weakens System-1's dominion.

That's it.

Communists & Republicans *both* need to extinguish considered-reasoning from our populations, to more-easily win System-1's totalitarian absolute supremacism.

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"Democracy".

Democracy means the citizens vote *on the issues*.

That was possible in an ancient city-state-nation, it is possible now, with modern information-systems.

Between those 2 times, however, it wasn't realistically-possible,
so we got in the habit of calling a highjacked "democracy", *representative republic*, .. "democracy".

Notice the difference, though...

Democracy:
Issue-1, Issue-2, Issue-3, Issue-4, all get voted-on by the citizens, the *majority of the citizen's view on THAT issue, decides THAT issue*...

Ah, but in "representative republic", it *doesn't* work that way...

Instead, it works *this* way...

Whomever is the most-successful narcissist/machiavellian/sociopath,
who wins election,
gets to decide all the issues *on behalf of* the citizenry.

IF the winners of the elections are all white, then .. nonwhite meaning *doesn't matter, no matter the issue, no matter how it affects everybody*...

And that is only 1 dimension of difference...

Lobbying/bribery?

Accommodated, so therefore it is the moneyed-special-interests who are wielding the "representatives"...

again, that contradicts democracy, too:
a 2nd dimension of contradiction...

etc.

*We've been gaslighting ourselves about what democracy means, for centuries*.

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There's even another dimension of this ( and I may be confusing this conversation with another I saw in the last hour, if so, sorry: my braindamage/brain-injury, my memory-problems )

That is the nature of prison.

What is required?

* segregation of the harmful from society
* punishment/aversion-therapy for those whose unconscious-minds *can* change

those 2 seem most-important, from what I can remember right now.

What is actually in-place?

* concentration of the harmful, multiplying their harm-competence & harm-capability, among themselves
* conditioning them to be criminal-culture & divorced from civil-health-culture
* authority gets to have beating-on-lives as part of its practice & process, conditioning it to bullying as THE answer & THE means, *while* eradicating any humanness from their inmates.

Do you see any *mismatch* between those 2 sets??

There was a Republican who ran the Texas prison-system, even when the Democrats had won the government, apparently, and he said something like...

"What greenhouses are to plants, prisons are to criminality."

*He was right*.

NONE of this is Solving The Right Problem.

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Now for the business of tolerance vs intolerance...

Do the "absolute free-speech" people allow
rabies, ebola, & cancer,
to have "free speech" within their bodies??

No??

They .. *censor* what cell-speech is tolerated in their bodies??

Of course they do.

That is where I'd draw the line.

IF a person is a FREE SPEECH ABSOLUTIST,

THEN that person has ZERO right to any immune-system, and ALL pathogens have the absolute right to free-speech within their bodies.

Problem solved.

( edit:

there are only 4 logically-possible positions a person can take...

* both country & person have the right to censor what expresses within themselves, for sake of ______ ( I'd say objective-health, but the politically-motivated definitely wouldn't allow that to be the standard )

* neither country nor person have the right to censor what expresses within themselves, for any reason. That should be considered insanity.

* the country does have the right to censor what expresses within itself, but the individual's immune-system doesn't. That should be considered insanity.

* the country doesn't have any right to censor what expresses within itself, but the individual does. That should be considered dangerous malevolent narcissism.

Someone did research, I wish I could remember who, and discovered that people push ideological-dishonesty *unless* there is personal-cost to doing-so.

The cost they were applying was money.

"I believe that..." and then one of the politically-motivated lies was offered, in varying degrees, but if the statement proved to be untrue, then it would COST them, ... suddenly honesty had more presence in the world??

Right there, that research identified the root problem.

If there is no, or too-little, cost to dishonesty/disingenuous-meaning-enforcing, then dishonesty *grows*, until the tipping-point is crossed, where the country is *lost*.

Russia has crossed that point.

Mexico probably isn't recoverable.

Many countries seem to be in this set.

The US is within 4 years of crossing that tipping-point.

Calculus ( derivatives ) is the math which finds the zero-slope part of the curve, where the curve is balanced.

That is the kind of math that is required to discover *exactly* what cost ought be put on what dishonest behaviors.

I used the "NO censorship!" gets "ok, you now have no right to any immune-system, then, because it is censoring pathogens within your body, and YOU prohibit that, in principle." as a marker/"goalpost" in order to show that the "treason is free speech! mass-shootings are free-speech!" humans-who-are-pathogens need to be faced with cost that matches what they're putting on others' lives.

That was to communicate *conceptually*.

The actual correct-cost to put on them would have to be discovered, but it *cannot* remain at, or near, zero.

As I say, some countries already are lost/irrecoverable, and the US is less than 4y away from that condition, in Civil War Part2.

There ARE consequences for accommodating/appeasing dishonesty, and those consequences tend to be massively slaughterous, once the tipping-point is crossed.

Back, now, to the previous message... : )

THEIR absolutism enforced within-their-own-bodies, and .. suddenly, they don't get to be pathogens against the countries they're inhabiting, anymore, do they?

God's LAW is *reflective* Law.

Your, or my, Soul/CellOfGod/Continuum/ChildOfGod *emits* a meaning?

The *same* Soul/CellOfGod *reabsorbs* that same meaning.

As Yehoshua "Jesus" benJoseph rendered karma in his Judean context:

"As one sows, so one MUST reap."

They who hold treason & mass-shootings to be "free speech" can take their ideology-addiction/prejudice-addiction to their Eternity, & complain that their hypocricy wasn't accommodated, to their God.

Many of them *claim* the same Yehoshua "Jesus" benJoseph who used "Hypocrite!" as a verbal-assault against legalists, while they are being legalists themselves, right?

*Their own root-guru* called their behaviour hypocrisy!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2023

is *604* times that someone decided mass-murder was their "free speech" right, and 754 were killed-outright in those "free speech" exercises, with thousands injured.

WHEN one accepts that within-one's-body is Nature's *demonstration* of what Free Speech requires...

...you've got literally-thousands of different kinds-of-cell-types that MUST express their different natures, their different "speech" kinds, in order for you to be healthy...

What your body needs to do, however, is to suppress *pathogens*...

THEN one understands the *already-solved* Paradigm.

Same within-one's-body as with countries.

Healthy-diversity is *required*, but treason, treachery, terrorism, mass-shootings, serial-murder, genociding, all of the systemic-dishonesty/narcissism/machiavellianism/sociopathy-psychopathy/nihilism/sadism 6-dimensions of human-evil ( that I know-of now, there may be another I've missed! "Dark Triad" only gets half of what I've found, so-far ) .. all these NEED to be stopped, not appeased, not accommodated... STOPPED COLD.

Consider judge-bias...

WHEN it is proven that judges consitently demonstrate racial & class bias through sentencing...

SHOULD judges be permitted to do sentencing?

Shouldn't judges be replaced with ML/decision-trees, for sentencing, in order to get *out* from our "justice" system, all that prejudice's *leverage* & *effect*?

I say yes.

What about the bias in judges' *judging*?

I'd say get that out, too, through systematic requirements...

filtering-out judges who aren't objective-enough.

proper training & ongoing-training.

proper prerequisites for thinking's competence.

statistical-monitoring to catch abusers ( unconscious or conscious ), as quickly as possible...

etc.

That judges' bias is so significant a thing *is itself a crime*, see?

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Anyways, I'm stopping now, as people don't usually want to see-through things, & have questioning brought onto the *system* of civilization, at a total level, right?

I do hope you dig-in, though, as *solving the right problem* is something that *can* make strategic-difference, whereas wrestling with appearances .. I've found futile.

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Salut, Namaste, & Kaizen.

_ /\ _

@Teri_Kanefield Concern over whether this thread of explanation constitutes "complaint" is as understandable as it is incorrect. Any sound of "complaint" that you may hear in your head, is not a tone that overwrites the general humor of your efforts.

It's frustrating to work so hard, to understand a thing—only to interact with so many who believe they understand it, too—without doing the work. I can only imagine the effort that goes into your many Social Media posts. With very few errors, too!

@Teri_Kanefield

"I have a totalitarian blog" made me LOL ;-)

I do have one tangential factual correction to offer on your excellent blog post. The idea that Article II requires a person to be born in the US to be president is not correct and never has been. (The movie/TV trope of the traveling American couple scrambling to get back inside the border because the wife was going into labor has always been wrong.) These guys explained it clearly:

https://harvardlawreview.org/forum/vol-128/on-the-meaning-of-natural-born-citizen/

@Teri_Kanefield

Seems to be your message is “the Law is about the details” and the interpretation of those details fairly is paramount to a democracy.

The dichotomy: a Democracy demands a fair interpretation of the law that will favor is own downfall.

To make matters worst, we just watch the law comes down to a court that appeared to ignoring “fair interpretation of details” for willingness to bend details towards an anti-Democracy bias.

@Teri_Kanefield
No all the antidemocratic opposition should be accommodated in a democracy.

Popper's paradox of tolerance is right and should be exercised.

Besides, any political system should generate results.

And always, all the time, all the regimens not delivering were replaced by others that did. It includes democratic regimens.

We never must lower our guard.

@Teri_Kanefield The comments are amazing but I would add:

What if it is just general ignorance?

People (Americans?) don't know the difference between economic systems, political systems and what is and is not authoritarian. It also doesn't help the social contract was always tilted to rich, old, white men.

Consequently they *think* things will go the way it has always gone (esp if good for them) but they haven't a clue as to how any of it works.

Or should work. This is deeply problematic

@Teri_Kanefield I think we're in a space and time where a lot of things have kind of come home to roost.

Since WWII, the emphasis for most of America was on making money with the assumption that the world would run itself if we just ran the profits up high enough.

Gen X wasn't, for the most part, raised with some vision of the world they were obligated to build. Coupled with the "make money at all costs" vs. Boomers pulling up the ladder after them, we don't have the larger perspective civics.

@Teri_Kanefield I think it's mostly fear. People are very, very afraid that a totalitarian opposition is going to take power and try to kill or otherwise eliminate them. It's not an unreasonable fear. The question is just what to do about it. Liberal democracy seems at least at first glance like it simply has no defenses against this--we have to risk the bad guys taking power and just murdering us in every single election. It grinds you down.

I've been reading a lot of Adam Silverman's posts over on Balloon Juice--he (unlike most of the regulars there) sounds like a lot of your respondents. He frames everything in terms of war. He says we're at war, a soft civil war that is part of a larger global World War III, and the Republicans realize this but Democrats and the administration don't.

But war and democracy are fundamentally incompatible--if our modern politics is a war then we've already lost the struggle for democracy, and need to give it up for the duration (and how long is that??) and fight a possibly violent battle for mere survival. That *is* basically how a lot of people on the other side see it.

I'm hoping the war frame is not the correct one--Adam is a military-oriented guy and tends to see things in war terms. But it's an open possibility.

@TCatInReality Quite honestly I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that the US government started propagandizing the idea that capitalism=democracy as an excuse to topple left leaning governments elsewhere (or ones that got in the way of US corporations). That and equating communism with authoritarianism/fascism while being, well, fascistic in the McCarthy era. The end result is that many Americans don't understand political systems at all and think capitalism=democracy.

@Teri_Kanefield