Human Space Flight Beyond Earth Orbit
Last month I made comments on spacenews about Polaris Dawn being rock bottom for Human Space Flight. Today, while lying in bed recovering from covid, I watched the Super Heavy do the first chopstick catch….and have a new rock bottom.
I also saw a headline that Trump and Harris are running even in the polls. And also another story about Elon being Trump’s “secretary of cost-cutting.”
The wars in Ukraine and Israel…this is not a good day.
About 10 years ago I posted some very rough estimates of how long it would take to get to various possible ocean destinations at 100,000 mph using 1000 bombs accelerating the ship a 100 mph at a time. Of course there are the 1000 more bombs to slow down, 1000 more bombs to speed back up, and 1000 more bombs to slow back down upon return to Earth. So…4000 bombs. But an Aircraft Carrier catapult accelerates a fighter to almost 175 mph and if that efficiency could be achieved it would cut the number of bombs way down. Possibly even 250 mph….which would mean only 1600 bombs for the whole trip. Slowing down using the nearest gas or ice giant’s atmosphere, available except for Pluto and Ceres, would reduce the number of bombs to 1200. And… filling up the bomb slugs with local ice and even using shielding for the decelerations to Ceres and Pluto and upon return in the vicinity of Earth, and then quickly re-shielding, might reduce the number to 1000.
Luna, launch point.
Jupiter system 200 days/ 7 months
2. Europa 2.025 km/s
3. Ganymede 2.741 km/s
4. Callisto 2.440 km/s (outside of Jupiter’s radiation belts)
Saturnian system 360 days/ 1 year
5. Mimas 0.159 km/s
6. Iapetus 0.573 km/s
7. Titan 2.639 km/s
8. Rhea 0.635 km/s
9. Dione 0.510 km/s
10. Tethys 0.394 km/s
11. Enceladus 0.239 km/s
Uranian system 2 years
12. Miranda 0.193 km/s
13. Ariel 0.558 km/s
14. Umbriel 0.520 km/s
15. Titania 0.773 km/s
16. Oberon 0.726 km/s
Neptunian system 3+years
17. Triton 1.455 km/s (around a 7 year mission to visit my favorite moon round-trip)
Plutonian system 4+years
18. Pluto 1.229 km/s
19. Charon 0.580 km/s
I have always liked Sam, despite his militant Atheism, which another person I listen to all the time, Chris Hedges, profoundly dislikes. He is so unhappy with the left’s support for Palestine that he almost, but not quite, says he would vote for Mitt Romney if it was him instead of Trump. Hmmm. Don’t go there Sam.
This is one of the most interesting conversations I have heard in a while. The examination of Trumpism is as disturbing as any I have heard or read over the years. How to explain it? Is it that people, at least half of them, are actually so…deplorable? So gullible, so biased, so prone to scapegoating and pandering to the strongman? So rotten inside? Do half the population hide their fundamental moral failure so well that the other half are not aware of it until it becomes normalized?
I read a reply to one of my comments about Trumpism and not understanding how this could happen the other day and one reply really got me.
@garychurch9237
7 days ago
What really worries me is that people don’t seem too worried about half the country having fallen down the Trumpist rabbit hole. It is profoundly disturbing, and I think about it every day. I was in the military back in the early 80’s with Reagan and both sides having a total of 60,000 nuclear weapons ready to go…and I feel the same now. I think we need more gravitas, more serious urging to get people to register and vote.
@kavflyladyvillery858
7 days ago
The problem is they didn’t fall down a “rabbit hole”. Many of them were already who they are, and djt gave them unsolicited permission to be their quiet, shadow selves out loud & in the open.
Chris Hedges states that Utopians, whether “New Atheists” or religious fundamentalists, believing that using violence is an answer, are “infected.” The disease is cultism, suspending critical thinking and perception of reality. And science, as in Nazi eugenics and social Darwinism, is just as much a cult as religion, and also the cult of the strongman, the cult of personality.
By Jonathan Chait
Last week, Donald Trump appeared before a rally in Iowa, where he regaled a crowd of supporters with stories of the great wealth of his inner circle of advisers. “When you get the president — this is the president of Goldman Sachs — smart! — having him represent us, he went from massive paydays to peanuts!” he boasted. The crowd applauded, as people passionate enough about a politician to attend a rally are wont to do.
But the thing about Trump’s core supporters is that Trump doesn’t have enough of them. To win the election, he had to pry away some former Obama voters in the Midwest, and he did it by positioning himself to his opponent’s left on economics. “Hillary will never reform Wall Street. She is owned by Wall Street!” he warned. “I’m not going to let Wall Street get away with murder,” he promised. His closing ad quoted Trump insisting, “The Establishment has trillions of dollars at stake in this election,” while images of a stock ticker and the street sign for Wall Street appeared onscreen.
Trump lies and reverses himself about all kinds of things, but usually this behavior is a flailing attempt at self-preservation. The curious thing about these particular reversals is that this hypocrisy comes at large cost to himself. Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg recently interviewed white working-class Obama voters who’d turned to Trump and found that news of the president’s Wall Street advisers was the fact most likely to shake their faith in his administration. Trump’s approval ratings have sunk to 40 percent or lower. Why is he making so little effort to conceal his bait-and-switch? Why forfeit his most precious political asset? The best explanation for this grand act of self-sabotage (beyond his simply not understanding the policies he endorses) is that Trump, like much of the Republican Party, is an instinctive social Darwinist.
Social Darwinism is a philosophy that treats the market as a perfectly efficient and moral mechanism for allocating wealth. Just as natural selection favors those species best adapted for survival, the theory goes, capitalism rewards the smartest and most deserving among us. It is the intellectual scaffolding, constructed by writers like Ayn Rand and various Austrian economists, behind the vision of conservatives like Paul Ryan and David Koch. Trump may not have read up on the theory, but he understands it viscerally. His father, Fred, inculcated his son with the unshakable belief that his own greatness would lead to enormous wealth.
Trump’s boast in Iowa about the “great, brilliant business minds” in his administration communicates a great deal about his innermost beliefs. “I love all people, rich or poor,” he explained, “but, in those particular positions, I just don’t want a poor person, does that make sense?” The richest people in the country are, by definition, the most brilliant and well qualified. Trump rejects the notion that circumstance, luck, or social advantage might play a role. In a 1990 interview, a more candid time, Trump expressed his belief that being born into poverty would not have arrested his rise. “The coal miner gets black-lung disease, his son gets it, then his son,” he told an interviewer. “If I had been the son of a coal miner, I would have left the damn mines. But most people don’t have the imagination — or whatever — to leave their mine. They don’t have ‘it’ … You’re either born with it or you’re not.”
Conservative intellectuals make a sharp distinction, at least in theory, between good wealth amassed through pure capitalism and bad wealth obtained by government favoritism. Trump has never observed any boundary between the two. (On the contrary: During the campaign, he presented his experience buying government influence as a qualification for office.) And in practice, few Republicans bother themselves too much over how a person got rich, either. The Bush administration was a boom time for grifters — Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, Bob Ney, and Duke Cunningham were among the party eminences who used Republican control of government to fatten their wallets.
After the Bush presidency collapsed, conservatives made a show of remorse and vowed not to succumb again to the temptations of corruption. Abramoff, the crooked conservative activist and lobbyist, refashioned himself after returning from prison as a chastened reformer. In 2012, he appeared at a Public Citizen event, denouncing the evils of the system.
But now the lessons have been discarded, and the stench of self-dealing is everywhere. The only low-income-housing program spared by Trump’s budget is one his business profits from, and he picked a comically underqualified family loyalist, an event planner by trade, to oversee federal housing in New York, where his business has its largest interest. Trump has handed control of every major regulatory agency to the industries they oversee — a Wall Street lawyer runs the Securities and Exchange Commission, fossil-fuel surrogates run the Environmental Protection Agency, the CEO of a for-profit lender will oversee the student-loan system, and on and on. Lobbyists are already shuffling between the White House and K Street. Even Abramoff has been lured out of retirement—registering as a foreign lobbyist, in which capacity he prevailed upon one member of Congress to write a letter requesting a presidential meeting with a client of Abramoff’s, a foreign dictator.
Congress has indulged Trump’s flagrant profiteering in part because he is letting them dip their beaks too. That Trump is holding his inaugural reelection fund-raiser in the Trump International Hotel, where party elites will join in an event that lines the president’s pockets, is one of the perfectly symbolic moments of the young administration. Any theoretical distinction between the Trumpian ethos of self-entitlement and the conservative doctrine of rewarding “job creators” has long since washed away.
Social Darwinism is the tissue connecting this shady conduct with the Republican Party’s highest policy priorities. Conservatives believe programs that tax the rich and benefit the poor illegitimately meddle with the natural and correct distribution of wealth produced by the marketplace. The Republican health-care bill — both what passed in the House and what Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has brought to the Senate — confers a nearly trillion-dollar tax cut that overwhelmingly benefits the wealthy. That appears to be its sponsors’ primary consideration. Secondarily, it strips away an equal amount in Medicaid and middle-class insurance tax credits.
Conservatives have little difficulty applying the logic of social Darwinism to justify punishing the sick. Vice-President Mike Pence explains that the administration’s health-care plan supports the promotion of “personal responsibility.” Kellyanne Conway implies that only an unwillingness to work would cause an able-bodied adult to have trouble affording health care: “If they are able-bodied and they want to work, then they’ll have employer-sponsored benefits like you and I do.” The Republican plan, explained Alabama congressman Mo Brooks, will reduce “the cost to those people who lead good lives. They’re healthy, they’ve done the things to keep their bodies healthy.” Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s budget director, allowed that while people who “get cancer” should have a “safety net,” “that doesn’t mean we should take care of the person who sits at home, eats poorly, and gets diabetes.”
After passing a health-care bill built around a regressive tax cut, Republicans plan to proceed quickly to a second tax cut, which is expected to also benefit the rich disproportionately. The two bills, which are the entire focus of the party’s current legislative ambitions, would constitute the most sweeping upward redistribution of resources in American history.
Washington in the summer of Trump’s first year is an atmosphere of organized looting. The precariousness of Trump’s position, given his anemic polling, a riled-up opposition, and Robert Mueller lurking in the background, has only heightened the urgency to get while the getting is good.
*A version of this article appears in the June 26, 2017, issue of New York Magazine.
Terrifying….
HE DOESN’T MEAN CAPITAL R
0:03
REPUBLICAN, HE MEANS WE’RE AT
0:04
THE END OF US BEING A REPUBLIC.
0:06
J.D. VANCE HAS NOT ONLY TO
0:09
CONSERVATIVES TO, IN HIS WORDS,
0:11
WAKE UP.
0:12
BUT WHAT THEY NEED TO WAKE UP TO
0:13
IS THE FACT THAT MOST OF
0:14
AMERICAN LIFE AND CULTURE SHOULD
0:16
BE, IN HIS WORDS, RIPPED OUT
0:21
LIKE A TUMOR.
0:22
THOSE ARE, AGAIN, HIS WORDS, NOT
0:23
MINE.
0:25
WATCH.
0:25
OUR LEADERS RIGHT NOW ARE SO
0:26
CORRUPT AND SO VILE THAT IF YOU
0:29
ASSIMILATE INTO THEIR CULTURE,
0:31
YOU’RE ASSIMILATING INTO, LIKE,
0:33
GARBAGE LIBERAL ELITE CULTURE.
0:35
YOU’RE NOT ASSIMILATING INTO
0:37
TRADITIONAL AMERICAN CULTURE.
0:38
SO, THIS IS A TOUGH, TOUGH
0:39
PICKLE FOR ME.
0:40
I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE RIGHT
0:41
ANSWER IS HERE BECAUSE YOU CAN’T
0:46
JUST TEACH THESE THINGS.
0:46
YOU CAN’T TEACH THAT WE LIVE IN
0:48
A GREAT COUNTRY IF THE LEADERS
0:50
ARE AK TUFLY ALIGNED AGAINST IT.
0:52
ALMOST THE THING YOU NEED TO DO,
0:53
STEP ONE IN THE PROCESS, IS TO
0:55
TOTALLY REPLACE, LIKE, RIP OUT
0:58
LIKE A TUMOR, THE CURRENT
0:59
AMERICAN LEADERSHIP CLASS AND
1:03
THEN REINSTALL SOME SENSE OF
1:05
AMERICAN POLITICAL RELIGION.
1:06
WE NEED TO RIP IT OUT LIKE A
1:09
TUMOR AND THEN INSTALL POLITICAL
1:15
RELIGION.
1:15
THE MAN WHO IS INTERVIEWING J.D.
1:17
VANCE HERE GETS VERY EXCITED
1:18
ABOUT THIS IDEA, AND IT LEADS —
1:21
THIS IS IMPORTANT HERE.
1:22
IT LEADS J.D. VANCE TO EXPLAIN,
1:24
SORT OF, INFLUENCES ON HIS
1:27
THOUGHTS, WHERE HE GETS HIS
1:28
IDEAS ON SUBJECTS LIKE THIS.
1:31
YOU SAID SOMETHING THAT I
1:33
WOULD LIKE TO ZERO DOWN ON.
1:36
HOW DO WE EFFECTIVELY, QUOTE,
1:38
RIP OUT THE DISGUSTING
1:40
LEADERSHIP CLASS?
1:43
OH, MAN.
1:46
I MEAN, YOU KNOW —
1:48
BECAUSE LET ME EXPAND ON THAT
1:50
JUST A SECOND.
1:50
YEAH, YEAH, YEAH.
1:51
I’M GOING TO GIVE YOU A
1:52
LITTLE COVER HERE.
1:53
IT’S NOT JUST — I MEAN,
1:54
OBVIOUSLY ELECTIONS.
1:56
THAT’S ONE THING, OKAY?
1:57
BUT UNFORTUNATELY, THIS EVIL
1:59
LEADERSHIP CLASS HAS ALREADY
2:00
TAKEN OVER ALL OF OUR
2:02
INSTITUTIONS.
2:03
CURRENT PIPELINE IS TO TURN THEM
2:04
INTO THOSE PEOPLE THAT WE JUST
2:05
CALLED EVIL AND DISGUSTING.
2:08
HOW DO WE, ASIDE FROM
2:10
ELECTIONS — HOW DO WE RIP OUT
2:11
THIS LEADERSHIP CLASS?
2:14
SO, THESE INSTITUTIONS ARE
2:17
CORRUPTED AND ROTTEN TO THE
2:19
CORE.
2:19
THIS IDEOLOGY IS EVERYWHERE AND
2:20
IN ALL THE THINGS.
2:22
WHAT OTHER OPTIONS DO WE HAVE
2:24
BESIDES VOTING THEM OUT, WHICH
2:25
WE’RE SEEING IS INEFFECTUAL.
2:28
THIS IS A TOUGH QUESTION BUT
2:30
THIS IS MAYBE THE QUESTION THAT
2:31
CONFRONTS US RIGHT NOW.
2:32
THERE’S THIS GUY, CURTISYEAH,
2:38
THERE’S THIS GUY, CURTIS YARVIN,
2:40
WHO WRITES ABOUT THIS STUFF.
2:42
A CHUCKLE FROM THE INTERVIEWER.
2:44
THIS IS CURTIS YARVIN WHO J.D.
2:47
VANCE IS CITING HERE AS HE IS
2:48
TALKING ABOUT THE NEED TO SEIZE
2:50
THE UNIVERSITIES, DESTROY — USE
2:53
THE GOVERNMENT TO DESTROY
2:54
BUSINESSES WHO AREN’T RIGHT
2:55
WING, TALKING ABOUT NEEDING TO
2:56
RIP OUT THE AMERICAN SYSTEM LIKE
3:00
A TUMOR.
3:01
HERE’S THE GUY HE IS CITING AS
3:05
HIS, SORT OF — THE SOURCE OF
3:07
HIS THINKING ON THESE MATTERS.
3:12
SO, I’VE RAISED THIS VERY
3:16
COMPLICATED PROBLEM TO A SIMPLE
3:20
FOUR LETTER ACRONYM WHICH IS
3:23
R.A.G.E., WHICH STANDS FOR
3:25
RETIRE ALL GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES.
3:29
VERY, VERY, VERY SIMPLE.
3:31
NOW, THE PROBLEM WITH THIS IS,
3:34
WHY HAVE WE NEVER HEARD THIS
3:35
BEFORE?
3:36
WHY HAS NO ONE SUGGESTED LET’S
3:39
GET RID OF THIS THING.
3:41
WHAT IS GOVERNMENT?
3:42
A GOVERNMENT IS JUST A
3:44
CORPORATION ENJOYING THE
3:45
COUNTRY.
3:46
NOTHING MORE, NOTHING LESS.
3:47
IT SO HAPPENS IN OUR
3:50
CORPORATION, VERY POORLY
3:52
MANAGED.
3:52
AND THERE IS A VERY SIMPLE WAY
3:54
TO REPLACE THEM WHICH IS WHAT WE
3:57
DO WHEN ALL FOUR HAVE FAILED.
3:59
WE SIMPLY BELIEVE THEM.
4:00
WE HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE TO DO THAT.
4:06
WE SHOULD DELETE THE U.S.
4:10
GOVERNMENT BECAUSE IT’S STALE.
4:11
IT HAS BEEN AROUND FOR TOO LONG.
4:13
WE HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE TO DO THAT,
4:15
MEANING DELETE OUR GOVERNMENT,
4:18
FOR 200 YEARS, SO IT’S GOTTEN A
4:19
BIT STALE.
4:20
IT’S BEEN AROUND TOO LONG.
4:23
SO, WHAT WOULD THAT ENTAIL,
4:24
DELETING THE U.S. GOVERNMENT?
4:28
THE OTHER THING ABOUT GETTING
4:30
RID OF YOUR GOVERNMENT IS YOU
4:31
CAN’T JUST SAY, WELL — FORMAL
4:34
GOVERNMENT.
4:34
YOU HAVE TO SAY, WELL, WHAT IS
4:36
THE SYSTEM ACTUALLY?
4:38
AND IT INCLUDES A LOT OF THINGS,
4:41
NGOs, UNIVERSITIES.
4:45
IT’S VERY, VERY LARGE SYSTEM.
4:46
AND IT ALL NEEDS TO BE
4:48
DESTROYED.
4:51
THERE’S LITE OF TALENTED
4:52
AMERICANS WHO ACTUALLY KNOW HOW
4:54
TO RUN THINGS AND MAKE THINGS
4:57
WORK AND ARE GENERALISTS.
4:58
AND YOU CAN GET THESE PEOPLE,
4:59
PUT THEM IN POSITIONS OF
5:01
RESPONSIBILITY AND HAVE THEM DO
5:03
THEIR THING.
5:03
AND FINALLY, YOU NEED A CEO.
5:10
A — CEO IS CALLED A DICTATOR.
5:12
IT’S THE SAME THING.
5:13
THERE’S NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
5:14
THE CEO AND A DICTATOR.
5:19
IF AMERICANS WANT TO CHANGE
5:21
THEIR GOVERNMENT, THEY’RE GOING
5:22
TO HAVE TO GET OVER THEIR
5:23
DICTATOR PHOBIA.
5:25
SO, THE VICE PRESIDENTIAL
5:28
CANDIDATES’ DEBATE IS TOMORROW.
5:29
TIM WALZ, THE DEMOCRATIC
5:31
CANDIDATE, HAS BEEN GOVERNOR, IS
5:33
CURRENTLY THE GOVERNOR OF
5:35
MINNESOTA.
5:36
HE’S BEEN A LONG-TERM
5:37
CONGRESSMAN, HIGH SCHOOL
5:38
TEACHER, FOOTBALL COACH, A
5:39
SOLDIER FOR DECADES.
5:41
J.D. VANCE, THE REPUBLICAN
5:42
CANDIDATE, IS A DIFFERENT KIND
5:43
OF CAT — FORGIVE ME.
5:45
ASIDE FROM A BRIEF STINT IN THE
5:48
MARINE CORPSE, WHERE HE SERVED
5:49
WITH THE PUBLIC AFFAIRS UNIT, HE
5:52
HAS SPENT HIS ADULT LIFE WORKING
5:56
FOR OR BEING SUPPORTED BY RIGHT
5:58
WING TECH BILLIONAIRES,
5:59
SPECIFICALLY ONES WHO HAVE
6:00
DEVOTED THEMSELVES TO THE
6:01
POLITICAL TEACHINGS OF THIS GUY.
6:06
FINALLY, YOU NEED A CEO AND
6:09
AN ACTUAL CEO IS WHAT’S CALLED A
6:11
DICTATOR.
6:11
IT’S THE SAME THING.
6:14
I HAVE DEBATED WHETHER OR NOT
6:15
TO TALK ABOUT THIS ON THE SHOW
6:17
BECAUSE I FEEL LIKE IT GIVES ME
6:20
THE UGHS.
6:21
BUT I ALSO FEEL LIKE THIS IS AN
6:22
IMPORTANT THING TO KNOW ABOUT
6:24
THE REPUBLICANS’ VICE
6:26
PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE AND WHAT HE
6:28
HAS TO OFFER AND WHY HE WAS
6:29
BROUGHT ON TO THE TICKET DESPITE
6:31
HIS PALPABLE LACK OF POLITICAL
6:33
SKILL OR LACKBILITY, HIS LACK OF
6:35
ANY TRACK RECORD IN POLITICS
6:38
WHATSOEVER, AND AFTER HE SPENT
6:39
LESS THAN TWO YEARS IN THE ONLY
6:41
PUBLIC OFFICE HE’S EVER HELD,
6:43
WHICH IS A SENATE SEAT, THAT HE
6:44
ONLY BARELY WON THANKS TO ONE OF
6:47
THOSE ECCENTRIC TECH
6:49
BILLIONAIRES GIVING HIM THE
6:50
SINGLE LARGEST SENATE CAMPAIGN
6:52
DONATION IN THE HISTORY OF THIS
6:53
COUNTRY.
6:53
I MEAN, HE COMES WHOLLY FROM
6:58
THIS VERY, VERY OBSCURE,
7:01
ECCENTRIC, RIGHT WING SUBCULTURE
7:03
OF TECH BILLIONAIRES.
7:06
AND HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH THIS
7:09
ECCENTRIC SILICON VALLEY PRO
7:12
DICTATORSHIP PHILOSOPHY HAS BEEN
7:14
PRETTY WIDELY DISCUSSED IN
7:15
PRINT.
7:15
THESE ARE A WHOLE BUNCH OF
7:18
ARTICLES.
7:18
I’VE DISCUSSED THIS AT ONE LEVEL
7:20
OR ANOTHER.
7:20
IT’S BEEN DISCUSSED IN PRINT.
7:22
BUT I DON’T FEEL LIKE IT’S
7:23
WIDELY UNDERSTOOD BY THE COUNTRY
7:24
WHO IS PAYING ATTENTION TO THIS
7:26
GUY AS A CANDIDATE.
7:28
BUT THIS IS WHERE J.D. VANCE’S
7:31
BIG IDEAS COME FROM ABOUT WHERE
7:32
THE COUNTRY IS HEADING FOR.
7:34
QUOTE, VANCE IS FRIENDS WITH
7:36
CURTIS YARVIN, WHO HE OPENLY
7:38
CITES AS A POLITICAL INFLUENCE.
7:41
YARVIN, THE MAIN POLITICAL
7:42
INFLUENCE ON ALL OF THE PEOPLE
7:43
WHO HAVE SUPPORTED J.D. VANCE
7:45
THROUGHOUT HIS CAREER, INCLUDING
7:46
PAYING TO INSTALL HIM IN THE
7:48
U.S. SENATE.
7:50
WHEN J.D. VANCE SAYS STUFF LIKE,
7:52
WE’RE IN A LATE REPUBLICAN
7:54
PERIOD — WHICH IS SOMETHING HE
7:55
SAYS ALL THE TIME — HE DOESN’T
7:57
MEAN ANYTHING ABOUT THE
7:57
REPUBLICAN PARTY.
7:58
HE MEANS WE’RE AT THE TIME RIGHT
8:01
BEFORE THE ROMAN REPUBLIC
8:04
COLLAPSED.
8:05
AND WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THE
8:06
ROMAN REPUBLIC COLLAPSED?
8:07
WELL, A DICTATOR, CAESAR, CAME
8:10
IN.
8:11
AND WASN’T THAT BETTER?
8:12
HE TALKS ABOUT BEING IN A LATE
8:14
REPUBLICAN PERIOD ALL THE TIME.
8:16
THAT’S HIM CHANNELLING THIS GUY,
8:19
YARVIN.
8:19
WHEN VANCE SAYS, UNIVERSITIES
8:21
ARE THE ENEMY AND THEY SHOULD BE
8:22
SEIZED, HE’S NOT ONLY
8:24
CHANNELLING ELIZABETH DILLING
8:25
AND ALLEN ZOLL AND ALL THE WEIRD
8:27
FAR RIGHT CRUSADERS AGAINST THE
8:29
UNIVERSITIES FROM THE ’30s AND
8:30
’40s.
8:31
THAT WOULD BE TROUBLING ENOUGH.
8:33
HE’S ALSO CHANNELLING THIS GUY,
8:35
YARVIN, WHO SAYS WHILE WE ARE
8:37
FIRING ALL THE GOVERNMENT
8:38
EMPLOYEES, WE SHOULD DO THE SAME
8:39
TO THE UNIVERSITIES BECAUSE
8:40
THEY’RE ALL PART OF THE BIGGER
8:41
SYSTEM THAT ALL NEEDS TO BE
8:43
DESTROYED.
8:45
HE SAYS, QUOTE, RETIRE THEIR
8:47
EMPLOYEES, LIQUIDATE THEIR
8:52
ASSETS.
8:53
UNIVERSITIES IN PARTICULAR HAVE
8:54
LOVELY CAMPUSES, MANY OF WHICH
8:55
ARE CENTRALLY LOCATED AND SHOULD
8:55
BE ATTRACTIVE TO DEVELOPERS.
8:57
MEANING LET’S PUT SOMEBODY IN TO
8:59
BE A — WHAT DOES HE CALL IT —
9:01
A NATIONAL CEO, WHICH IS
9:04
INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM A
9:05
DICTATOR.
9:05
AND A DICTATOR SHOULD TAKE OVER
9:08
ALL THE UNIVERSITIES AND SELL
9:09
THEM OFF TO DEVELOPERS.
9:10
THIS IS LITERALLY A
9:14
PRO-DICTATORSHIP PRO-MON ARKIE
9:16
PHILOSOPHY THIS IS NOT JUST
9:17
ABOUT ENDING THE U.S. SYSTEM OF
9:19
GOVERNMENT, DELETING THE U.S.
9:20
GOVERNMENT, BUT THEN USING THE
9:22
POWER OF A DICTATOR TO DISMANTLE
9:25
UNIVERSITIES, DISMANTLE
9:26
BUSINESSES, TO DISMANTLE ALL OF
9:28
CIVIL SOCIETY, TO INSTEAD
9:30
INSTALL A WHOLE NEW SYSTEM
9:31
CONTROLLED BY THE STATE THAT
9:33
SERVES JUST THE DESIRES OF THE
9:35
LEADER.
9:40
TOMORROW AT THE DEBATE, IT IS
9:41
GOING TO COME UP THAT J.D. VANCE
9:44
WANTS NATIONAL ABORTION BAN.
9:45
IT’S GOING TO COME UP THAT HE
9:47
HAS TOLD AND CONTINUES TO TELL
9:49
HORRIBLE LIES ABOUT IMMIGRANTS.
9:51
IT IS GOING TO COME UP THAT HE
9:52
HAS SAID HIS RUNNING MATE WAS
9:54
AMERICA’S HITLER, HIS PHRASE,
9:57
AND CULTURAL HEROIN, AND THAT
9:58
TRUMP’S PRESIDENCY WAS A
10:02
FAILURE.
10:03
IT’S GOING TO COME UP — HIS
10:03
INVOLVEMENT IN PROJECT 2025 IS
10:04
GOING TO COME UP.
10:05
HIS PROPOSAL THAT PEOPLE WITHOUT
10:07
CHILDREN SHOULD BE TAXED MORE
10:09
AND SHOULD HAVE THEIR VOTES
10:11
COUNT LESS, IT WILL ALL COME UP
10:12
AT TOMORROW’S DEBATE.
10:14
WHAT DO YOU DO WITH THIS STUFF?
10:19
STEP ONE IN THE PROCESS IS TO
10:22
TOTALLY REPLACE, LIKE, RIP OUT
10:25
LIKE A TUMOR THE CURRENT
10:26
AMERICAN LEADERSHIP CLASS.
10:27
REPUBLICANS, CONSERVATIVES,
10:30
WE’RE STILL TERRIFIED OF
10:31
WIELDING POWER, OF ACTUALLY
10:33
DOING THE JOB PEOPLE SENT US
10:34
HERE TO DO.
10:35
YOU NEED A CEO, AND A
10:37
NATIONAL CEO IS WHAT’S CALLED A
10:39
DICTATOR.
10:39
IT’S THE SAME THING.
10:40
WE’VE GOT TO GET COMFORTABLE
10:41
WITH WIELDING POWER.
10:42
THERE’S NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
10:43
THE CEO AND DICTATOR.
10:45
IF AMERICANS WANT TO CHANGE
10:46
THEIR GOVERNMENT, THEY HAVE TO
10:47
GET OVER DICTATOR PHOBIA.
10:49
GOING TO HAVE TO GET OVER
10:50
THEIR DICTATOR PHOBIA.
10:54
WHAT DO YOU DO WITH THIS LEVEL
10:55
OF RADICALISM, TRYING TO TAKE
10:57
OVER IN WASHINGTON RIGHT NOW AND
10:58
TRYING TO CONVINCE THE FAR RIGHT
11:00
THAT THEY’VE GOT TO STOP BEING
11:02
AFRAID OF WIELDING THIS KIND OF
11:04
POWER THIS WAY?
11:06HE DOESN’T MEAN CAPITAL R
0:03
REPUBLICAN, HE MEANS WE’RE AT
0:04
THE END OF US BEING A REPUBLIC.
0:06
J.D. VANCE HAS NOT ONLY TO
0:09
CONSERVATIVES TO, IN HIS WORDS,
0:11
WAKE UP.
0:12
BUT WHAT THEY NEED TO WAKE UP TO
0:13
IS THE FACT THAT MOST OF
0:14
AMERICAN LIFE AND CULTURE SHOULD
0:16
BE, IN HIS WORDS, RIPPED OUT
0:21
LIKE A TUMOR.
0:22
THOSE ARE, AGAIN, HIS WORDS, NOT
0:23
MINE.
0:25
WATCH.
0:25OUR LEADERS RIGHT NOW ARE SO
0:26
CORRUPT AND SO VILE THAT IF YOU
0:29
ASSIMILATE INTO THEIR CULTURE,
0:31
YOU’RE ASSIMILATING INTO, LIKE,
0:33
GARBAGE LIBERAL ELITE CULTURE.
0:35
YOU’RE NOT ASSIMILATING INTO
0:37
TRADITIONAL AMERICAN CULTURE.
0:38
SO, THIS IS A TOUGH, TOUGH
0:39
PICKLE FOR ME.
0:40
I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE RIGHT
0:41
ANSWER IS HERE BECAUSE YOU CAN’T
0:46
JUST TEACH THESE THINGS.
0:46
YOU CAN’T TEACH THAT WE LIVE IN
0:48
A GREAT COUNTRY IF THE LEADERS
0:50
ARE AK TUFLY ALIGNED AGAINST IT.
0:52
ALMOST THE THING YOU NEED TO DO,
0:53
STEP ONE IN THE PROCESS, IS TO
0:55
TOTALLY REPLACE, LIKE, RIP OUT
0:58
LIKE A TUMOR, THE CURRENT
0:59
AMERICAN LEADERSHIP CLASS AND
1:03
THEN REINSTALL SOME SENSE OF
1:05
AMERICAN POLITICAL RELIGION.
1:06
WE NEED TO RIP IT OUT LIKE A
1:09
TUMOR AND THEN INSTALL POLITICAL
1:15
RELIGION.
1:15
THE MAN WHO IS INTERVIEWING J.D.
1:17
VANCE HERE GETS VERY EXCITED
1:18
ABOUT THIS IDEA, AND IT LEADS —
1:21
THIS IS IMPORTANT HERE.
1:22
IT LEADS J.D. VANCE TO EXPLAIN,
1:24
SORT OF, INFLUENCES ON HIS
1:27
THOUGHTS, WHERE HE GETS HIS
1:28
IDEAS ON SUBJECTS LIKE THIS.
1:31
YOU SAID SOMETHING THAT I
1:33
WOULD LIKE TO ZERO DOWN ON.
1:36
HOW DO WE EFFECTIVELY, QUOTE,
1:38
RIP OUT THE DISGUSTING
1:40
LEADERSHIP CLASS?
1:43
OH, MAN.
1:46
I MEAN, YOU KNOW —
1:48
BECAUSE LET ME EXPAND ON THAT
1:50
JUST A SECOND.
1:50
YEAH, YEAH, YEAH.
1:51
I’M GOING TO GIVE YOU A
1:52
LITTLE COVER HERE.
1:53
IT’S NOT JUST — I MEAN,
1:54
OBVIOUSLY ELECTIONS.
1:56
THAT’S ONE THING, OKAY?
1:57
BUT UNFORTUNATELY, THIS EVIL
1:59
LEADERSHIP CLASS HAS ALREADY
2:00
TAKEN OVER ALL OF OUR
2:02
INSTITUTIONS.
2:03
CURRENT PIPELINE IS TO TURN THEM
2:04
INTO THOSE PEOPLE THAT WE JUST
2:05
CALLED EVIL AND DISGUSTING.
2:08
HOW DO WE, ASIDE FROM
2:10
ELECTIONS — HOW DO WE RIP OUT
2:11
THIS LEADERSHIP CLASS?
2:14
SO, THESE INSTITUTIONS ARE
2:17
CORRUPTED AND ROTTEN TO THE
2:19
CORE.
2:19
THIS IDEOLOGY IS EVERYWHERE AND
2:20
IN ALL THE THINGS.
2:22
WHAT OTHER OPTIONS DO WE HAVE
2:24
BESIDES VOTING THEM OUT, WHICH
2:25
WE’RE SEEING IS INEFFECTUAL.
2:28
THIS IS A TOUGH QUESTION BUT
2:30
THIS IS MAYBE THE QUESTION THAT
2:31
CONFRONTS US RIGHT NOW.
2:32
THERE’S THIS GUY, CURTISYEAH,
2:38
THERE’S THIS GUY, CURTIS YARVIN,
2:40
WHO WRITES ABOUT THIS STUFF.
2:42
A CHUCKLE FROM THE INTERVIEWER.
2:44
THIS IS CURTIS YARVIN WHO J.D.
2:47
VANCE IS CITING HERE AS HE IS
2:48
TALKING ABOUT THE NEED TO SEIZE
2:50
THE UNIVERSITIES, DESTROY — USE
2:53
THE GOVERNMENT TO DESTROY
2:54
BUSINESSES WHO AREN’T RIGHT
2:55
WING, TALKING ABOUT NEEDING TO
2:56
RIP OUT THE AMERICAN SYSTEM LIKE
3:00
A TUMOR.
3:01
HERE’S THE GUY HE IS CITING AS
3:05
HIS, SORT OF — THE SOURCE OF
3:07
HIS THINKING ON THESE MATTERS.
3:12
SO, I’VE RAISED THIS VERY
3:16
COMPLICATED PROBLEM TO A SIMPLE
3:20
FOUR LETTER ACRONYM WHICH IS
3:23
R.A.G.E., WHICH STANDS FOR
3:25
RETIRE ALL GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES.
3:29
VERY, VERY, VERY SIMPLE.
3:31
NOW, THE PROBLEM WITH THIS IS,
3:34
WHY HAVE WE NEVER HEARD THIS
3:35
BEFORE?
3:36
WHY HAS NO ONE SUGGESTED LET’S
3:39
GET RID OF THIS THING.
3:41
WHAT IS GOVERNMENT?
3:42
A GOVERNMENT IS JUST A
3:44
CORPORATION ENJOYING THE
3:45
COUNTRY.
3:46
NOTHING MORE, NOTHING LESS.
3:47
IT SO HAPPENS IN OUR
3:50
CORPORATION, VERY POORLY
3:52
MANAGED.
3:52
AND THERE IS A VERY SIMPLE WAY
3:54
TO REPLACE THEM WHICH IS WHAT WE
3:57
DO WHEN ALL FOUR HAVE FAILED.
3:59
WE SIMPLY BELIEVE THEM.
4:00
WE HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE TO DO THAT.
4:06
WE SHOULD DELETE THE U.S.
4:10
GOVERNMENT BECAUSE IT’S STALE.
4:11
IT HAS BEEN AROUND FOR TOO LONG.
4:13
WE HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE TO DO THAT,
4:15
MEANING DELETE OUR GOVERNMENT,
4:18
FOR 200 YEARS, SO IT’S GOTTEN A
4:19
BIT STALE.
4:20
IT’S BEEN AROUND TOO LONG.
4:23
SO, WHAT WOULD THAT ENTAIL,
4:24
DELETING THE U.S. GOVERNMENT?
4:28
THE OTHER THING ABOUT GETTING
4:30
RID OF YOUR GOVERNMENT IS YOU
4:31
CAN’T JUST SAY, WELL — FORMAL
4:34
GOVERNMENT.
4:34
YOU HAVE TO SAY, WELL, WHAT IS
4:36
THE SYSTEM ACTUALLY?
4:38
AND IT INCLUDES A LOT OF THINGS,
4:41
NGOs, UNIVERSITIES.
4:45
IT’S VERY, VERY LARGE SYSTEM.
4:46
AND IT ALL NEEDS TO BE
4:48
DESTROYED.
4:51
THERE’S LITE OF TALENTED
4:52
AMERICANS WHO ACTUALLY KNOW HOW
4:54
TO RUN THINGS AND MAKE THINGS
4:57
WORK AND ARE GENERALISTS.
4:58
AND YOU CAN GET THESE PEOPLE,
4:59
PUT THEM IN POSITIONS OF
5:01
RESPONSIBILITY AND HAVE THEM DO
5:03
THEIR THING.
5:03
AND FINALLY, YOU NEED A CEO.
5:10
A — CEO IS CALLED A DICTATOR.
5:12
IT’S THE SAME THING.
5:13
THERE’S NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
5:14
THE CEO AND A DICTATOR.
5:19
IF AMERICANS WANT TO CHANGE
5:21
THEIR GOVERNMENT, THEY’RE GOING
5:22
TO HAVE TO GET OVER THEIR
5:23
DICTATOR PHOBIA.
5:25
SO, THE VICE PRESIDENTIAL
5:28
CANDIDATES’ DEBATE IS TOMORROW.
5:29
TIM WALZ, THE DEMOCRATIC
5:31
CANDIDATE, HAS BEEN GOVERNOR, IS
5:33
CURRENTLY THE GOVERNOR OF
5:35
MINNESOTA.
5:36
HE’S BEEN A LONG-TERM
5:37
CONGRESSMAN, HIGH SCHOOL
5:38
TEACHER, FOOTBALL COACH, A
5:39
SOLDIER FOR DECADES.
5:41
J.D. VANCE, THE REPUBLICAN
5:42
CANDIDATE, IS A DIFFERENT KIND
5:43
OF CAT — FORGIVE ME.
5:45
ASIDE FROM A BRIEF STINT IN THE
5:48
MARINE CORPSE, WHERE HE SERVED
5:49
WITH THE PUBLIC AFFAIRS UNIT, HE
5:52
HAS SPENT HIS ADULT LIFE WORKING
5:56
FOR OR BEING SUPPORTED BY RIGHT
5:58
WING TECH BILLIONAIRES,
5:59
SPECIFICALLY ONES WHO HAVE
6:00
DEVOTED THEMSELVES TO THE
6:01
POLITICAL TEACHINGS OF THIS GUY.
6:06
FINALLY, YOU NEED A CEO AND
6:09
AN ACTUAL CEO IS WHAT’S CALLED A
6:11
DICTATOR.
6:11
IT’S THE SAME THING.
6:14
I HAVE DEBATED WHETHER OR NOT
6:15
TO TALK ABOUT THIS ON THE SHOW
6:17
BECAUSE I FEEL LIKE IT GIVES ME
6:20
THE UGHS.
6:21
BUT I ALSO FEEL LIKE THIS IS AN
6:22
IMPORTANT THING TO KNOW ABOUT
6:24
THE REPUBLICANS’ VICE
6:26
PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE AND WHAT HE
6:28
HAS TO OFFER AND WHY HE WAS
6:29
BROUGHT ON TO THE TICKET DESPITE
6:31
HIS PALPABLE LACK OF POLITICAL
6:33
SKILL OR LACKBILITY, HIS LACK OF
6:35
ANY TRACK RECORD IN POLITICS
6:38
WHATSOEVER, AND AFTER HE SPENT
6:39
LESS THAN TWO YEARS IN THE ONLY
6:41
PUBLIC OFFICE HE’S EVER HELD,
6:43
WHICH IS A SENATE SEAT, THAT HE
6:44
ONLY BARELY WON THANKS TO ONE OF
6:47
THOSE ECCENTRIC TECH
6:49
BILLIONAIRES GIVING HIM THE
6:50
SINGLE LARGEST SENATE CAMPAIGN
6:52
DONATION IN THE HISTORY OF THIS
6:53
COUNTRY.
6:53
I MEAN, HE COMES WHOLLY FROM
6:58
THIS VERY, VERY OBSCURE,
7:01
ECCENTRIC, RIGHT WING SUBCULTURE
7:03
OF TECH BILLIONAIRES.
7:06
AND HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH THIS
7:09
ECCENTRIC SILICON VALLEY PRO
7:12
DICTATORSHIP PHILOSOPHY HAS BEEN
7:14
PRETTY WIDELY DISCUSSED IN
7:15
PRINT.
7:15
THESE ARE A WHOLE BUNCH OF
7:18
ARTICLES.
7:18
I’VE DISCUSSED THIS AT ONE LEVEL
7:20
OR ANOTHER.
7:20
IT’S BEEN DISCUSSED IN PRINT.
7:22
BUT I DON’T FEEL LIKE IT’S
7:23
WIDELY UNDERSTOOD BY THE COUNTRY
7:24
WHO IS PAYING ATTENTION TO THIS
7:26
GUY AS A CANDIDATE.
7:28
BUT THIS IS WHERE J.D. VANCE’S
7:31
BIG IDEAS COME FROM ABOUT WHERE
7:32
THE COUNTRY IS HEADING FOR.
7:34
QUOTE, VANCE IS FRIENDS WITH
7:36
CURTIS YARVIN, WHO HE OPENLY
7:38
CITES AS A POLITICAL INFLUENCE.
7:41
YARVIN, THE MAIN POLITICAL
7:42
INFLUENCE ON ALL OF THE PEOPLE
7:43
WHO HAVE SUPPORTED J.D. VANCE
7:45
THROUGHOUT HIS CAREER, INCLUDING
7:46
PAYING TO INSTALL HIM IN THE
7:48
U.S. SENATE.
7:50
WHEN J.D. VANCE SAYS STUFF LIKE,
7:52
WE’RE IN A LATE REPUBLICAN
7:54
PERIOD — WHICH IS SOMETHING HE
7:55
SAYS ALL THE TIME — HE DOESN’T
7:57
MEAN ANYTHING ABOUT THE
7:57
REPUBLICAN PARTY.
7:58
HE MEANS WE’RE AT THE TIME RIGHT
8:01
BEFORE THE ROMAN REPUBLIC
8:04
COLLAPSED.
8:05
AND WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THE
8:06
ROMAN REPUBLIC COLLAPSED?
8:07
WELL, A DICTATOR, CAESAR, CAME
8:10
IN.
8:11
AND WASN’T THAT BETTER?
8:12
HE TALKS ABOUT BEING IN A LATE
8:14
REPUBLICAN PERIOD ALL THE TIME.
8:16
THAT’S HIM CHANNELLING THIS GUY,
8:19
YARVIN.
8:19
WHEN VANCE SAYS, UNIVERSITIES
8:21
ARE THE ENEMY AND THEY SHOULD BE
8:22
SEIZED, HE’S NOT ONLY
8:24
CHANNELLING ELIZABETH DILLING
8:25
AND ALLEN ZOLL AND ALL THE WEIRD
8:27
FAR RIGHT CRUSADERS AGAINST THE
8:29
UNIVERSITIES FROM THE ’30s AND
8:30
’40s.
8:31
THAT WOULD BE TROUBLING ENOUGH.
8:33
HE’S ALSO CHANNELLING THIS GUY,
8:35
YARVIN, WHO SAYS WHILE WE ARE
8:37
FIRING ALL THE GOVERNMENT
8:38
EMPLOYEES, WE SHOULD DO THE SAME
8:39
TO THE UNIVERSITIES BECAUSE
8:40
THEY’RE ALL PART OF THE BIGGER
8:41
SYSTEM THAT ALL NEEDS TO BE
8:43
DESTROYED.
8:45
HE SAYS, QUOTE, RETIRE THEIR
8:47
EMPLOYEES, LIQUIDATE THEIR
8:52
ASSETS.
8:53
UNIVERSITIES IN PARTICULAR HAVE
8:54
LOVELY CAMPUSES, MANY OF WHICH
8:55
ARE CENTRALLY LOCATED AND SHOULD
8:55
BE ATTRACTIVE TO DEVELOPERS.
8:57
MEANING LET’S PUT SOMEBODY IN TO
8:59
BE A — WHAT DOES HE CALL IT —
9:01
A NATIONAL CEO, WHICH IS
9:04
INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM A
9:05
DICTATOR.
9:05
AND A DICTATOR SHOULD TAKE OVER
9:08
ALL THE UNIVERSITIES AND SELL
9:09
THEM OFF TO DEVELOPERS.
9:10
THIS IS LITERALLY A
9:14
PRO-DICTATORSHIP PRO-MON ARKIE
9:16
PHILOSOPHY THIS IS NOT JUST
9:17
ABOUT ENDING THE U.S. SYSTEM OF
9:19
GOVERNMENT, DELETING THE U.S.
9:20
GOVERNMENT, BUT THEN USING THE
9:22
POWER OF A DICTATOR TO DISMANTLE
9:25
UNIVERSITIES, DISMANTLE
9:26
BUSINESSES, TO DISMANTLE ALL OF
9:28
CIVIL SOCIETY, TO INSTEAD
9:30
INSTALL A WHOLE NEW SYSTEM
9:31
CONTROLLED BY THE STATE THAT
9:33
SERVES JUST THE DESIRES OF THE
9:35
LEADER.
9:40
TOMORROW AT THE DEBATE, IT IS
9:41
GOING TO COME UP THAT J.D. VANCE
9:44
WANTS NATIONAL ABORTION BAN.
9:45
IT’S GOING TO COME UP THAT HE
9:47
HAS TOLD AND CONTINUES TO TELL
9:49
HORRIBLE LIES ABOUT IMMIGRANTS.
9:51
IT IS GOING TO COME UP THAT HE
9:52
HAS SAID HIS RUNNING MATE WAS
9:54
AMERICA’S HITLER, HIS PHRASE,
9:57
AND CULTURAL HEROIN, AND THAT
9:58
TRUMP’S PRESIDENCY WAS A
10:02
FAILURE.
10:03
IT’S GOING TO COME UP — HIS
10:03
INVOLVEMENT IN PROJECT 2025 IS
10:04
GOING TO COME UP.
10:05
HIS PROPOSAL THAT PEOPLE WITHOUT
10:07
CHILDREN SHOULD BE TAXED MORE
10:09
AND SHOULD HAVE THEIR VOTES
10:11
COUNT LESS, IT WILL ALL COME UP
10:12
AT TOMORROW’S DEBATE.
10:14
WHAT DO YOU DO WITH THIS STUFF?
10:19
STEP ONE IN THE PROCESS IS TO
10:22
TOTALLY REPLACE, LIKE, RIP OUT
10:25
LIKE A TUMOR THE CURRENT
10:26
AMERICAN LEADERSHIP CLASS.
10:27
REPUBLICANS, CONSERVATIVES,
10:30
WE’RE STILL TERRIFIED OF
10:31
WIELDING POWER, OF ACTUALLY
10:33
DOING THE JOB PEOPLE SENT US
10:34
HERE TO DO.
10:35
YOU NEED A CEO, AND A
10:37
NATIONAL CEO IS WHAT’S CALLED A
10:39
DICTATOR.
10:39
IT’S THE SAME THING.
10:40
WE’VE GOT TO GET COMFORTABLE
10:41
WITH WIELDING POWER.
10:42
THERE’S NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
10:43
THE CEO AND DICTATOR.
10:45
IF AMERICANS WANT TO CHANGE
10:46
THEIR GOVERNMENT, THEY HAVE TO
10:47
GET OVER DICTATOR PHOBIA.
10:49
GOING TO HAVE TO GET OVER
10:50
THEIR DICTATOR PHOBIA.
10:54
WHAT DO YOU DO WITH THIS LEVEL
10:55
OF RADICALISM, TRYING TO TAKE
10:57
OVER IN WASHINGTON RIGHT NOW AND
10:58
TRYING TO CONVINCE THE FAR RIGHT
11:00
THAT THEY’VE GOT TO STOP BEING
11:02
AFRAID OF WIELDING THIS KIND OF
11:04
POWER THIS WAY?
11:06
WHAT DO YOU DO WITH THIS?
WHAT DO YOU DO WITH THIS?
The idea of “the common good” was once widely understood and accepted in America. After all, the U.S. Constitution was designed for “We the people” seeking to “promote the general welfare” — not for “me the selfish jerk seeking as much wealth and power as possible.”
What happened? One clue is found in the writings of writer-philosopher Ayn Rand, who argued that the common good was bunk.
Donald Trump has called Rand his favorite writer and said he identifies with Howard Roark, the protagonist of The Fountainhead — an architect who dynamites a housing project he designed because the builders did not precisely follow his blueprints. (I doubt Trump has ever read Rand, but for the sake of this essay, let’s assume he has.)
Rex Tillerson, secretary of state under Trump, called Rand’s Atlas Shrugged his favorite book. Former Trump CIA chief Mike Pompeo cited Rand as a major inspiration. Before he withdrew his nomination to be Trump’s secretary of labor, Andrew Puzder said he devoted much of his free time to reading Rand. Paul Ryan, former Republican leader of the House of Representatives, required his staff to read Rand.
Rand fans are also found at some of the high reaches of American business. Uber’s founder and former CEO, Travis Kalanick, has described himself as a Rand follower. He applied many of her ideas to Uber’s code of values. Kalanick even used The Fountainhead’s original cover art as his Twitter avatar.
Ronald Reagan professed to being a follower of Rand. His policies — and those of his contemporary conservative leader, Margaret Thatcher of Great Britain — appeared to draw inspiration from her thoughts and writing.
In order to understand what happened to the common good, we need to examine Ayn Rand and her arguments against it.
Rand was a Russian émigré to the United States whose father’s business had been confiscated during the Russian Revolution. Her most influential writing occurred in the 1940s and 1950s, in the shadow of European fascism and Soviet communism.
She was best known for two highly popular novels that are still widely read today — The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957) — and for other writings and interviews in which she expounded her views about what she called the “virtue of selfishness.”
“The common good is an undefined and undefinable concept,” she wrote, a “moral blank check for those who attempt to embody it.”
When the common good of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual desires of its members, “it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals.”
Rand saw government actions that require people to give their money and resources to other people under the pretext of a “common good” as steps toward tyranny. It was far better, in Rand’s view, to base society on autonomous, self-seeking, and self-absorbed individuals. To her, the only community that any of us has in common are family and friends, maintained voluntarily.
If we want to be generous, she thought, that’s fine, but no one should have the power to coerce us into generosity. And nothing beyond our circle of voluntary associations merits our trust.
No institutions or organizations should be able to demand commitments from us. All that can be expected or justified from anyone is selfish behavior, she thought. That behavior is expressed most clearly through the acts of selling what we have to sell and buying what we want to buy in a free market. For her, the common good does not exist.
Rand’s philosophy was updated and formalized in 1974 by Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick in his bestselling book Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Nozick argued that individual rights are the only justifiable foundation for a society. Instead of a common good, he wrote, “there are only individual people, different individual people, with their own individual lives.”
When Rand and Nozick propounded these ideas, they seemed quaint if not far-fetched. Anyone who lived through the prior half-century had witnessed our interdependence during the Great Depression and World War II.
After the war, we had pooled our resources to finance all sorts of public goods — schools and universities, a national highway system, and health care for the aged and poor (Medicare and Medicaid). We rebuilt war-torn Europe. We sought to guarantee the civil rights and voting rights of African Americans. We opened doors of opportunity to women.
Of course there was a common good. We were living it.
But starting in the late 1970s, Rand became the intellectual godmother of modern-day American conservatism, especially its libertarian strand.
I BELIEVE RAND, NOZICK, AND THEIR MORE MODERN INCARNATIONS are dangerously wrong. Not only does the common good exist, but it is essential for a society to function.
Without voluntary adherence to a set of common notions about right and wrong, daily life would be insufferable. We would be living in a jungle where only the strongest, cleverest, and most wary could hope to survive. This would not be a society. It wouldn’t even be a civilization, because there would be no civility at its core.
Americans sharply disagree about exactly what we want for America or for the world. But we must agree on basic principles — such as how we deal with our disagreements, the importance of our democratic institutions, our obligations toward the law, and our respect for the truth — if we’re to participate in the same society.
It’s our agreement to these principles that connects us.
To take the most basic example, we depend on people’s widespread and voluntary willingness to abide by laws — not just the literal letter of laws but also the spirit and intent behind them.
Consider what would happen if no one voluntarily obeyed the law without first calculating what they could gain by violating it, as compared with the odds of the violation’s being discovered multiplied by the size of the likely penalty.
We’d be living in bedlam.
If everyone behaved like Donald Trump, much of our time and attention would have to be devoted to outwitting or protecting ourselves from other Trumps. We would have to assume everyone else was out to exploit us, if they could.
Every interaction would need to be carefully hedged. Penalties would need to rise and police enforcement to increase, in order to prevent the Trumps among us from calculating they might have more to gain by violating the law and risking the penalty than by abiding by it. And because laws can’t possibly predict and prevent every potential wrong, laws would have to become ever more detailed and exacting in order to prevent the Trumps from circumventing them.
Even then we’d be in trouble. We couldn’t rely on legislators to block or close legal loopholes, because Trump lobbyists would bribe legislators to keep them open, and Trump legislators would be open to taking such bribes. Even if we managed to close the loopholes, we couldn’t rely on police to enforce the laws, because Trumps would bribe the police not to, and Trump police would also accept the bribes.
Without a shared sense of responsibility to the common good, we would have to assume that everybody — including legislators, judges, regulators, and police — was acting selfishly, making and enforcing laws for their own benefit.
The followers of Ayn Rand who glorify the “free market” and denigrate “government” are fooling themselves if they think the “free market” gets them off this Trump hook.
The market is itself a human creation — a set of laws and rules that define what can be owned and traded and how. Government doesn’t “intrude” on the “free market.” It creates the market. Government officials — legislators, administrators, regulators, judges, and heads of state — must decide on and enforce such laws and rules in order for a market to exist. Without norms for the common good, officials have no way to make these decisions other than their own selfish interests.
HOPEFULLY, government officials base these sorts of decisions on their notions about the common good. But if Trumps were making and enforcing such rules, the rules would be based on whatever it took for these Trump officials to gain personal wealth and power. The “free market” would be a sham, and most people would lose out in it. (As we will see in the pages to come, something close to this has in fact occurred.)
Truth itself is a common good. Through history, one of the first things tyrants do is attack independent truth-tellers — philosophers (Plato), scientists (Galileo), and the free and independent press — thereby confusing the public and substituting their own “facts.”
Without a shared truth, democratic deliberation is hobbled. As poet and philosopher Václav Havel put it, “If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living in truth.”
Yet in a world populated by people like Trump, we could not trust anyone to be truthful if they could do better for themselves by lying. We couldn’t count on any claim by sellers of any product or service. Internet-based “reputational ratings” would be of little value, because Trump raters would be easily bribed.
Journalists would shade their reports for their own selfish advantage, taking bribes from advertisers or currying favor with politicians. Teachers would offer lessons to satisfy wealthy or powerful patrons. Historians would alter history if by doing so they gained wealth or power. Scientists would doctor evidence for similar selfish motives. The truth would degenerate into a cacophony of competing factual claims.
We couldn’t trust doctors or pharmacists to give us the right medications. We couldn’t trust bankers and accountants not to fleece us, restaurants not to poison us, lawyers not to hoodwink us. Professional ethics would be meaningless.
The common good is especially imperiled when a president of the United States alleges that an election was stolen from him, with no evidence that it was. Such baseless claims erode trust. They fuel conspiracy theories. They can lead to violence.
MOST BASICALLY, THE COMMON GOOD DEPENDS ON PEOPLE TRUSTING that most others in society will also adhere to the common good, rather than lie or otherwise take advantage of them. In this way, civic trust is self-enforcing and self-perpetuating.
Polls tell us that a majority of today’s Americans worry that the nation is losing its national identity. The core of that identity has never been “we’re better than anyone else” nationalism. Nor has it been the whiteness of our skin or the uniformity of our ethnicity.
Our core identity — the most precious legacy we have been given by the generations who came before us — is the ideals we share, the good we hold in common. If we are losing our national identity, it is not because we are becoming blacker or browner or speak in more languages than we once did. It is because we are losing our sense of common good.
THE GENIUS OF A SYSTEM BASED ON POLITICAL EQUALITY is that it doesn’t require us to agree on every issue, but only to agree to be bound by decisions that emerge from the system.
Some of us may want to prohibit abortions because we believe life begins at conception; others of us believe women should have the right to determine what happens to their bodies; some of us want stricter environmental protections; others, more lenient. We are free to take any particular position on these and any other issues. But as political equals, we are bound to accept the outcomes even if we dislike them. This requires enough social trust for us to regard the views and interests of those with whom we disagree as equally worthy of consideration to our own.
Ayn Rand had it completely wrong. Moral choices logically involve duties to others, not just calculations about what’s best for ourselves.
When members of a society ask, “What is the right or decent thing to do?” they necessarily draw upon understandings of these mutual obligations. Our contemporary culture of self-promotion, iPhones, selfies, and personal branding churns out cynics and narcissists, to be sure. But our loyalties and attachments define who we are.
“5:13 -there is a network of countries who
5:15 push each other towards ever more
5:17 democracy there’s also a network of
5:21 autocratic countries whose leaders are
5:23 kleptocrats essentially they’re
5:25 governments who share the same interest
5:27 in stealing and hiding money and
5:30 oppressing or arresting anybody who
5:31 tries to stop them right I mean they
5:33 aren’t connected to one another by
5:35 ideology they’re not all I don’t know
5:37 theocracies or communist regimes but
5:40 they are united in their need to
5:42 undermine the rule of law and repress
5:44 their own people as a result of wanting
5:46 to steal more money-“
That…is a Kleptocracy.
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“9:17 – if America continues down a
9:20 similar path away from democracy and
9:23 towards something different what does
9:25 that mean for countries like
9:27 Venezuela-“
What does America moving away from democracy (to fascism) mean for (for example) Venezuela? The Nazis exterminated their enemies to steal what they had, using race and ideology as their excuse. Wars of extermination are the logical progression of Kleptocracy.
I have had the unpleasant experience of submitting comments to The Space Review and the moderators being very selective about what they allow to be posted. At least they seem to have given up on trying to ban me completely. Unfortunately, they have been allowing me to post a single or one or two comments and then no more while allowing my entourage of cyberstalkers, who have followed me for years, to excoriate me. And I get no opportunity to do similar execution. I become a punching bag. Which is of course why I have been banned so many times. I am not a punching bag. I hit back. And then they ban me. They can ban me or ban the literally dozens of fanboys inundating me with vicious insults and serial harassment in the form of mocking gifs, cartoons, and blatant lies about the comments I have posted. The same fanboys who email editors their complaints by the dozen when I do hit back. Others wishing to simply enjoy themselves babbling their thoughts on any given article who would not be inclined to be trolls often join in. And that is, by the way, the group dynamic of Fascism. People want a better life and when an authoritarian group says they will provide that but will actively make sure you get a worse life if you do not support them, you go along to get along. You might even indulge your own biases to some degree. All the way up to the point where they invent a reason to take you to the death camp.
The Space Review posted my comment after a week and have not allowed my entourage to reply to it. Thank you Space Review. Here it is:
For fifteen years I have witnessed the Cult of Musk flood these forums with NewSpace talking points and understand the ideology as well as anyone. The base, the floor of this movement, is the idea that only wealth has any meaning. The truth, which is the lifeblood of a functioning democracy, has no meaning, while lying is embraced by both Trump and Musk as simply a good political and business practice. In the case of Trump it is anything exposing him as “fake news” and with Musk it is a million people to Mars in ten years making him the sci-fi savior of our species. Only they can save us. The big lies of rigged elections and Mars as a second home for humankind are perfect for any who need justification for their state-hate/white grievance and absolute greed. The ultimate goal being to replace government with rule by the rich. Oligarchy.
The most admired of all Americans next to Medal of Honor winners are Astronauts. Trump belittled the Medal of Honor by stating the civilian Medal of Freedom was “better” when presenting it to the widow of a donor; The Adelsons donated $20 million to Trump’s first presidential campaign and $5 million for the inauguration. That same year, the couple gave more than $100 million to conservative groups and conservative candidates during the election cycle. In 2020, the couple contributed $75 million to the Preserve America PAC, a Trumpist super PAC. The Adelson’s total contributions to their party totaled more than $218 million between 2019 and 2020. Musk mirrored this with his Polaris Dawn mission which was an obvious message to the public that NASA Astronauts were no longer needed or should be held up as our best and that billionaut tourists paying his company to go into space were the new heroes. Company over country, celebrity over patriotism, Oligarchy as the only authority, and lies conditioning the citizenry to just not care anymore…the star Russian disinformation tactic called “The Firehose of Falsehood.”
It is thus transparent when SpaceX ignores government regulation.
I mused that God is sending me a sign by disabling the device I comment with….because I have to give up this toxic community that has taken so much of my time over the last decade. Most of the people commenting are Sock Puppet fanboys. It has to end.
Marcus:
The closer the elections, the more madness
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Gravity: Marcus
Elon has suddenly become very anti government. Quite happy when he accepts the handouts though. He will milk this as over reach and pin it squarely on the Democrats if he can.
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Sock Puppet: Gravity
Few people would be opposed to the government if the government wasn’t currently run by communist degenerates bent on destroying the country and the American citizens living in it.
Government has forgotten that government solely exist by the consent of the people, and it is there to serve the needs and interests of its citizens, not the other way around.
Ice on the Moon 