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Nov 9Liked by Robyn Chuter

It is frankly bizarre that citizens of other countries, let alone Americans, are having mental breakdowns over the USA election.

I thought Jeff Brown's column made a lot of sense (https://substack.com/home/post/p-151398986), but of course, there was someone commenting that he was insensitive and cruel to the grief the Democrats were suffering, and that - of course! - he could never understand because he's white, male and has the incredible privilege of being Canadian.... WTF?

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The comments on this column made me lose hope in humanity. There is precisely zero insight into what just happened in the US. As Walter Kirn pointed out repeatedly in his election postmortem with Matt Taibbi (https://www.racket.news/p/atw-live-election-recap-at-12-pm), this election result is a giant middle finger to the self-appointed elite who for the last 8 years have scolded the American public, with increasing shrillness, about what they should and shouldn't believe, do, think, watch, enjoy, reject, and of course, for whom they should vote. The Democratic party has completely abandoned its base - working class people - in favour of increasingly bizarre identitarian politics and the neocon agenda of asserting US hegemony all over the world, at the expense of American citizens. Trump increased his vote among women, blacks and hispanics who plainly don't give a crap about identity politics. Working class voters who have historically been rusted-on Democrat voters, flocked to Trump. This is an extraordinary realignment of the major parties and their respective demographic bases. Yet there has been no serious analysis of the election results on the basis of class distinctions in any of the regime media, or the left-leaning alternative media.

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Agree. I really don't know how you can get through to these people, notwithstanding I was one of them until about 5 minutes ago.

But I did read White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo some years ago and thought, okay, yeah. But then recently I started reading White Guilt by Shelby Steele and I was like, WTF?, how did I ever fall for DiAngelo's BS?!! Steele's book is in a completely different class.... there is simply no comparison between the two. I don't know how anyone could take DiAngelo seriously after reading Steel's work, or no doubt Thomas Cowell's as well (haven't read the latter yet, but seen quite of few quotes of his).

How do you break people out of a cult? - I assume that's the approach needed.

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Nov 9Liked by Robyn Chuter

First rate Robyn! So many great points, especially highlighting that the unelected administration pulls the strings. Regarding fluoride, the allowable limit for Australian water (1.5 ppm) is double the USA limit of 0.7 ppm, and yet there seems total silence within our shores since the US district court's ruling at levels of 0.7 ppm. Surely there will be a knock-on effect here, or perhaps it's just my wishful thinking. Have you heard any rumblings about fluoride in Australian water since the US court's ruling?

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I really hope there will be a knock-on effect from the fluoride case here in Australia. But it won't happen spontaneously, for exactly the reason you mentioned - the unelected administration pulls the strings and they are all-in on fluoride. Individuals need to start fronting up to council meetings, armed with the US court decision and the scientific papers that led to it (available here: https://fluoridealert.org).

Here in Queensland, the decision about whether to add fluoride to town water was handed over to local councils back in 2008, and two thirds of councils elected to abandon it. Those councils responded to the concerns of people who got up off their tushes and went to council meetings. Squeaky wheels!

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Nov 9Liked by Robyn Chuter

Apparently, you have to be un-American, aka Australian, to have a rational, coherent point of view about Trump and the irrationality that has spread faster than a replication competent obligate intracellular parasite. My penchant for anarchy allows me to extricate myself from the politics, but I know it still affects me. I expect things to get ugly soon.

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There remain a few examples of (reasonably) prominent Americans who have managed to maintain some degree of objectivity about Trump; Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald are two who spring to mind. Most of those whose voices reach us, are completely polarised: Trump is Literally Hitler, or he is our Saviour. It's utter nonsense. It's hard for me to escape the conclusion that this polarisation has been intentionally induced in order to increase the likelihood of violence erupting (Antifa have been rioting in Seattle already), which then becomes the pretext for declaring martial law. Checkmate.

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Nov 9Liked by Robyn Chuter

"there is an irresolvable tension between science, in its old or its new sense, and politics, and that any attempt to resolve the tension is likely to have terrible consequences in the political world; that the political world must be ruled not by science but by prudence. This requires at a minimum the recognition that there will always be a "gap" between theory and practice, and that the recalcitrant or intractable political problems cannot be wholly resolved-at least, not by a government of free men."

FF - This piece by the legal philosopher and law professor, Walter Berns written in 1963 presciently speaks to what science applied as law might look like. Not good for freedom, constitutional liberty. In this piece Berns is writing a critique of another legal philosopher's work, Frederick K. Beutel, who wrote a book proposing science-based law and jurisprudence. Behavioral Science. Aka The Science (TM) of the pandemic. The Science (TM) that all of the world's leaders, on the right and left have told us we must follow.

Law and Behavioral Science

Walter Berns

Law and Contemporary Problems (Duke Law School), Winter, 1963

https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2953&context=lcp

[The first 14 pages get into a game theory type application of behavioral sciences on judicial philosophy. The final 14 pages are very informative and cautionary of governance by science.]

"Man, he says, has achieved power over nature but not over himself; the "philosophy of social control" has not kept pace with "the revolutionary developments of physical science," which has engendered grave "mental, political and social maladjustments." This disproportion is largely the responsibility of "obsolescent practices," a reliance "upon ancient theories, institutions and dogmas about the nature of man fomented by clerics and philosophers [such as] the Bible, Aristotle, Plato, Adam Smith, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Montesquieu, Bentham, Blackstone and Marx." One such theory, or "fomented" theory, is the idea that man is not a part of nature in the same way that animals and inanimate objects are. "Most advanced thinkers [however] have now come to the conclusion that man in his most intricate aspects is as much a part of the universe as is an animal or a stone.... " Being wholly in and of nature, man is as controllable as other animals and matter, and the means of effecting this control is experimental jurisprudence. "Nobody should be prepared to argue that the solution of all moral, social and international problems is presently possible by the technique of Experimental Jurisprudence, but can it not be said that it is foreseeable that the ultimate projection of procedures here suggested may lead to a possible means of resolution of clashes of opinion which in the past have been settled by brute force?"

...

Beutel tells us.:

"Looking far into the future, it may be predicted that the methods of legally directed thought control may eventually take over the direction and control of what some now call human values and that this power may be turned to scientific purposes. If this is to be accomplished, it should be along the lines of Experimental Jurisprudence. When this is done, there will no longer be any basis for the belief that social science is impossible because it contains no elements of control such as those found in physical sciences. The means of social control by law are now developing and increasing all about us. Mankind may soon be required to make the choice whether these powers are to be exercised for greed, lust and caprice of individuals or are to be used in the scientific advancement of the race."

Beutel is not altogether clear as to what he means by the "scientific advancement of the race," and the laws appropriate to this advancement; but he does have a test, of sorts, of good laws.:

"The laws to be enacted or recommended should be those which lead to the greatest sum total of satisfaction of needs, demands and desires, in that order of rank. Thus a more complicated person is certain to have greater wants than a simple individual, and his combined interests as a whole will therefore weigh heavier in the scientific scale than those of a less complicated (less intelligent, if you will) individual."

But supposing the "less complicated" people object to this dispensation?:

"If ... sufficient public interest is to be developed in adopting new scientific methods, it will be necessary for this small [at most "six percent of the entire population"] nucleus from which come the able scientists to convince the great majority to agree to types of governmental and legal devices which the overwhelming mass of people cannot even understand. Under the circumstances, the development of popular pressure for adoption of scientific discoveries into the legal and governmental field sufficient to overcome the inertia of those in control of the machinery is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve."

That the scientists should be restrained by the need to get the consent of the ("less complicated") governed is reassuring, but perhaps only temporarily, since we know that this restraint does not derive from any principle to be found in the book. The Declaration of Independence states that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed," but Beutel dismisses its "theories" as mere "fictions," even more "advanced in the realm of fiction" than the notion of the "divine right of kings.' Never lacking in boldness, he goes right on to state his lack of interest in any of these "theories":

"The experimental jurist as such has little interest in the general theories advanced to explain the purposes of government as a whole or to justify certain lines of policy. As a scientist he must recognize that these expressions are largely fictional. While he might possibly desire to examine the factual effectiveness of various devices used to disseminate these fictions in persuading the public to submit to the general policies of a particular government, his immediate attention preferably would be directed toward the effect of a particular law in accomplishing the real purpose for which it was created."

...

Rule by experimental jurisprudence is not imminent, and there would seem to be little danger of its ever coming about, at least in all its manifestations. Nevertheless, what this book represents must be taken seriously: an impatience with the "unscientific" aspects of democratic government.

...

Doubtless there have been "phenomenal technical and scientific" advances during the past century, as Beutel says, and that there is a "social lag"; and perhaps it is true that the "general science and art of lawmaking" has not developed "since the days of the Roman Empire"; but this is no reason for law to imitate physics or engineering. On the contrary, a grasp of the fundamental problems might reveal that there is an irresolvable tension between science, in its old or its new sense, and politics, and that any attempt to resolve the tension is likely to have terrible consequences in the political world; that the political world must be ruled not by science but by prudence. This requires at a minimum the recognition that there will always be a "gap" between theory and practice, and that the recalcitrant or intractable political problems cannot be wholly resolved-at least, not by a government of free men. True, Socrates said that "cities will never have rest from their evils--no, nor the human race ... until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy"; but Socrates, who failed even in his attempt to rule his wife, Xanthippe, knew and taught that it is extremely unlikely that the conditions required for the rule of the wise will ever be met. As Leo Strauss has said:

"What is more likely to happen is that an unwise man, appealing to the natural right of wisdom [to rule] and catering to the lowest desires of the many, will persuade the multitude of his right: the prospects for tyranny are brighter than those for rule of the wise. This being the case, the natural right of the wise must be questioned, and the indispensable requirement for wisdom must be qualified by the requirement for consent. The political problem consists in reconciling the requirement for wisdom with the requirement for consent."

Legal scholars, and even practicing lawyers, know these exceedingly important things; they therefore have more to teach to the new scientists than the new scientists have to teach them."

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"Science-based law and jurisprudence" sends a shiver up and down my spine. Highly educated nitwits who believe that the answer to every problem is to gather more data and analyse it more precisely.

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I'll pull a few of the more prescient passages out:

"Beutel tells us.: "Looking far into the future, it may be predicted that the methods of legally directed thought control may eventually take over the direction and control of what some now call human values and that this power may be turned to scientific purposes. If this is to be accomplished, it should be along the lines of Experimental Jurisprudence. [FF - Behavioral science-based propaganda and censorship so government can control the "cognitive infrastructure" of the nation]

"Mankind may soon be required to make the choice whether these powers are to be exercised for greed, lust and caprice of individuals or are to be used in the scientific advancement of the race." Beutel is not altogether clear as to what he means by the "scientific advancement of the race" [FF- Eugenics!]

"The laws to be enacted or recommended should be those which lead to the greatest sum total of satisfaction of needs, demands and desires, in that order of rank. Thus a more complicated person is certain to have greater wants than a simple individual, and his combined interests as a whole will therefore weigh heavier in the scientific scale than those of a less complicated (less intelligent, if you will) individual." [FF - You will own nothing and eat bugs in your 15-minute cities. We will own it all and eat caviar, veal and filet mignon.]

"Nevertheless, what this book represents must be taken seriously: an impatience with the "unscientific" aspects of democratic government" [FF - government by the people is so messy and inefficient!]

FF - It's all about efficiency, you see! On that note, here's a newspaper snippet from the same era that is instructive for what the highly educated nitwits believe:

‘Damned Efficient Slavery’ vs. ‘Inefficient Freedom’

https://archive.org/details/dailycolonist0158uvic_1/mode/2up?view=theater

The Daily Colonist (AP), January 4th, 1958

"Sir David, member of the British cabinet, addressed members of the British-American Chamber of Commerce and Trade Centre, the San Francisco World Trade Association and the World Affairs Council of Northern California.

Because the Soviets mobilize and direct all their economic resources from one centre, he said, they have a great advantage.

“Vice-President Nixon called the Russian system slavery. All right, slavery it is. But damned efficient slavery."..."“We cherish our freedom. All right, freedom it is, but sadly inefficient freedom.”"

This has been coming at us for a very long time. But we stopped questioning the natural right of the wise to rule. And allowed the Behavioral Scientists to manufacture our consent, as Noam Chomsky described. Who himself was inspired by an Australian, dedicated his book Manufacturing Consent to him. Alex Carey.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Carey_(writer)

Carey wrote the essays published posthumously in these works.

Taking the risk out of democracy : propaganda in the US and Australia (1995)

https://ratical.org/ratville/RiskDemo.html

https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/corporate-war-against-democracy

Taking the risk out of democracy : corporate propaganda versus freedom and liberty (1997)

https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p066160

http://dailyrevolution.org/saturday/carey1.html

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=7182262

Perhaps being down under you're more familiar with Carey than I am?

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