"Thelemites for Trump" Facebook page
-
Every man and every woman is a star.
(Not just old, white, rich people and their corporations.)
Ok, so far we have (1) thought-ending scare blips about nanny state (2) attacks on my purpose in life and (3) misleading appeals to authority figures.
I usually see much better from you, Takamba.
-
@Avshalom Binyamin said
"Every man and every woman is a star.
(Not just old, white, rich people and their corporations.)
Ok, so far we have (1) thought-ending scare blips about nanny state (2) attacks on my purpose in life and (3) misleading appeals to authority figures.
I usually see much better from you, Takamba."
Declaring "logical fallacy" in a muted debate seems a little self-taught by the Internet's trends to me. Saying that a person we know has here in these very forums stated without reservation that a person has to request the healing of the A.'.A.'.'s light and that not even that is guaranteed because it might be at odds with their Will (capital W version there for reasons) is not an appeal to authority, it's citing a source. Or are you saying Jim is not an authority and should be regarded as false in any premise attached to him?
I'm middle-aged, white, and living in a vehicle because I'm a beach bum.
so that was wrong too.Just because you don't like my opinion doesn't mean it is the wrong opinion to have and that it is not based on solid reasoning and long inspected ethical and moral questioning. Attacking my arguments with unsubstantiated word-smithing is fruitless. If you have information to support your claim that how you vote is based on your desire to expand the division of the classes and yet not once do you even acknowledge having read that I said it was the expansion of government powers, then say something. Insulting me personally does not score you debate points.
Point number 1: The Constitution exists to restrict government powers and rights.
Point number 2: Any responsibility you give to the government comes with the surrender of rights.Vote as ye will.
-
The old, rich, white, man was about the demographic Trump's policies are designed to support, not which ones you fit. I already knew yours.
I don't know what Jim's statements about requests for healing have to do with anything. What's misleading is pretending they somehow support your political opinions.
Despite your someone interesting 2 points, the constitution's first sentence contains its purpose:
"in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity"
Maybe you could pick something measurable that you connect with making it easier for the most people to live their true wills, and describe how Trump has improved that metric?
So far the only bill he has signed is a tax bill, which gives 83% of tax cuts to the wealthiest 1% of the nation. It's an expansion of the class divide.
This ain't rocket science, no matter how much you want to spin the situation with mumbo jumbo. Trump's policies harm people, which hinders their ability to do the great work. It disproportionately harms women, non-whites, and the poor. I pray to Horus that we can eradicate his selfish, narcissistic, racist, sexist, fascist discourse from our politics within my lifetime, if not within yours.
-
@Avshalom Binyamin said
"I'm not sure what the '80s talk radio bit about "mom and dad" government corresponds to in the real world, or what seeekinghga's comments been. But thank you both for showing to demonstrate fluffy peddlers of soothing koans for the politically disenfranchised."
I'll just say one thing more in this thread, then I promise you that I'm done. My first remark I made was a carelessness on my part. I'll admit that. I saw an opportunity to discuss a certain aspect of philosophy and went for it, completely ignorant of the politically charged agenda that this thread seems to be sizzling with. In no way was it my intention to say that "if life sucks then get more enlightened." And I'm pretty damn sure that at no point did I say anything which remotely resembles that admonishment, though people will extract what they want from the words of others. My wrongdoing is this thread is that I was off topic. It's a bad habit because on other forums I post on that's allowed with more leniency than it appears it is wanted here, which is fine. I apologize for my transgression and place myself at the mercy of the forum courts.
Bottom line. Our rights can be thwarted AND our rights can not be thwarted. It's dependent on one's perspective. That's all that I was implying, however poorly a job I did at doing so. It's right there in the very first sentence of my very first post in this thread. All of my talk of flowers and Suns and Ipsissimuses (sp?) was only for the sake of clarifying the philosophical implications of the first half of that sentence, I was not telling anyone what to do or what to be or what to think. Is it right to say that Liber Legis unfairly mocks the trevails of our lives because at one point it insists that "existence is pure joy" and that we are to "Remember" that?
Again, my apologies to Avshalom Binyamin and everyone else for [x:208u1qvn]going[/x:208u1qvn] being off topic and for that dreadful, horribly ill-conceived "poem" in my last post. It was simply never my intention to enter into a political debate. Shame on me for not pondering the title of this thread for more than a fraction of a second.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
-
"Politics" can mean almost anything - and the word often contains human psychologies battling it out over ideologies.
But "politics" also means something more administrative, a utility that society has to solve problems and administer solutions to commonly shared problems.
Sometimes, it is probably wise to put away any ideology, thelema or otherwise - if it interfers in solving real world problems that stare us in the face.
Did either Hillary or Trump come close to even reflecting my ideals? No, of course not. Hardly any candidate ever has.
An election is a practical choice which is more important than any ideology. How do we make this thing work? How do we get closer to having a more healthy society?
Democracy, for example - is inherently flawed (see 2016 election as recent example) yet as citizens, it is the only thing we have.
In 2016 we had a very very clear practical choice - and for many it was confused as an ideological choice. Ouch.
Now how would Thelema come in? In how we view ourselves in the world, and the world itself. We don't fear the collapse of the old order (sheesh who could deny that is not in full effect these days?).
We live in a time right now where while the old order is collapsing (including democracy) we have new emerging things that keep the "ideals" of the old order intact (for example openness and participatory) but can be updated to reflect a more efficient and "better" order. Cryptocurrency is one example of this, and of course the internet itself. Technology I believe is the central theme of the third chapter (this is only my interpretation) that is both collapsing the old and building the new.
-
Also, just a final thought of Liber Oz.
I always thought that line "the right to kill those who would..." was problematic, and for years suspected there was some hidden zen somewhere that I was missing.
Surely I don't have the right kill someone because I demand a salmon dinner and they refuse my request, and there are much better ways to solve a problem if someone is thwarting my rights than to kill them.
Then I did kinda get the joke - the contradiction that dangles like so much in Thelema and Crowlianity.
If you kill someone because you believe they are thwarting your rights, then by definition you are also thwarting all of their rights to do the same (independent if they are truly thwarting your "rights" or not) since you have extinguished their physical existence. So that extinguishes itself.
Also, if you are restricting your own will - then you're own thoughts are thwarting your rights, and verily and amen - kill those bloody thoughts with fire and vengeance, spit upon them and laugh at their misery.
-
It is very strange to me, this queasiness over Liber Oz.
Let's be clear: You don't "have" rights. The space of action you are allowed to move within by law is simply a part of the social order reproducing itself. Any OTHER rights you want to claim for yourself you will only get by demanding to be recognized, by through sheer force of will carving out a new space of action that might become permanent and universalized enough that it becomes part of a new reproducing order.
Any rights you are able to exercise right now are there because of historical reasons. The right to not be a serf exists because people have been ready to kill and be killed in order to secure that right.
There is absolutely no mystery in these lines, no hidden meaning. The right to kill means the right to kill. By retreating from this declaration you are taking complete comfort in the guaranteed permanence of the present order. One from which you will get a harsh awakening sooner or later. Even more odd is for a proclaimed Thelemite to take this position, someone supposedly striving to surpass this order in whatever way.
This feeling of unease looks to me little more than an expression of commonplace liberal pacifism. And liberal pacifism is always hypocritical - verbally extolling non-violence while practically defending a social order maintained by constant violence. This violence, by the way, is the secret guarantor of your rights as they stand, and it's a pretty crass way to maintain them at that.
-
@Victor said
"It is very strange to me, this queasiness over Liber Oz.
Let's be clear: You don't "have" rights. The space of action you are allowed to move within by law is simply a part of the social order reprocing itself. Any OTHER rights you want to claim for yourself you will only get by demanding to be recognized, by through sheer force of will carving out a new space of action that might become permanent and universalized enough that it becomes part of a new reproducing order.
Any rights you are able to exercise right now are there because of historical reasons. The right to not be a serf exists because people have been ready to kill and be killed in order to secure that right.
There is absolutely no mystery in these lines, no hidden meaning. The right to kill means the right to kill. By retreating from this declaration you are taking complete comfort in the guaranteed permanence of the present order. One from which you will get a harsh awakening sooner or later. Even more odd is for a proclaimed Thelemite to take this position, someone supposedly striving to surpass this order in whatever way.
This feeling of unease looks to me little more than an expression of commonplace liberal pacifism. And liberal pacifism is always hypocritical - verbally extolling non-violence while practically defending a social order maintained by constant violence. This violence, by the way, is the secret guarantor of your rights as they stand, and it's a pretty crass way to maintain them at that."
Yup
-
Meh.
Kind of hypocritical to extol violence on the individual level to claim one's personal rights, but then complain when a culture chooses to systematically implement violence in a collective way with more consensus and oversight, in order to to claim rights for others.
Again, this isn't rocket science. Ayn Rand style beliefs are a fantasy peddled to losers to talk them into letting the rich, corrupt people have more power.
Every man and every woman is a star.
-
Good God, I'm as far away from Ayn Rand as you can get. I will punch myself if I'm giving off that impression.
My remarks on violence was simply stating a fact. The tree of liberty has been watered with the blood of tyrants and martyrs, to paraphrase Jefferson.
And violence in liberal democracy is not just used to protect rights, but also to keep people down (people who demand rights not sanctioned for instance, like occupying an empty house if you're homeless), was my point. In any case, opposition to violence is in 99% of cases not a true opposition, but an opposition with qualifications.
To illustrate: If someone was seriously thwarting your rights, say threatening to murder or enslave you, or someone close to you, what would be your response? Not exactly a great dilemma.
And if someone in that case would respond with meekness, not wanting to sully their hands, allowing the other person to carry on, surely that would be the true moral outrage.Even if someone is perfectly at home in their society, they have to admit that this violence is sustaining it. What does it then mean, this shirking away at the thought of violence? It doesn't make sense, unless this outward display of peacefulness actually masks the brutal exercise of power.
A lot of people thought it absolutely horrible and barbaric that the heads of the nobility were rolling in France, while peasants living under the whip was just part of the God-given harmonious order. That's the kind of hypocrisy I'm talking about. -
"To illustrate: If someone was seriously thwarting your rights, say threatening to murder or enslave you, or someone close to you, what would be your response? "
Talk to my friends and neighbors about how we can mitigate the threat of murder and enslavement in our community.
If the threat is immediate, my responses could be: run away, fight, refuse to negotiate and accept my fate. I dunno. Interestingly, I have used up half of my life expectancy without this issue coming up once for me, personally. I may never encounter it. Thanks to the fact that people got together and figured out how to reduce violence in my part of the world.
Yes, societies are established with violence (or the threat thereof) with the intention of regulating violence. In liberal, representative governments, the whole point is that more people get to decide how violence is allowed to be used, while fewer people actually have to use violence. Getting to be a pacifist is one of the perks.
I'm profoundly grateful to the people who have engaged in violence in the past to help secure freedoms for other people. It was a huge sacrifice, because violence sucks. If history deems that violence is again necessary to preserve the freedoms of others, I'll do what I can. But as of now, voting, marching, calling, organizing all seem to be the more effective strategies for people of my time and place.
-
@Hermitas said
"Come on, Takamba, Av is saying the most relevant, practical stuff in this thread.
What are you suggesting instead?"
Victor is showing practical and relevant stuff. The word "most" in this case doesn't work as a "quantity" word because victors points are more in quantity (practical and relevant) and so, therefore, I have to believe your use of the word "most" is a qualitative descriptor, and opinion, or "fluff term" as understood in marketing.
Let's be practical. Decide we raise a civilization against violence, make them by design runaway or cower or simply ignore. Every so often there's a fluke birth. Kid can't seem to learn! Fucker is violent!
wham! your society is now down for the count. Gone. Wiped by the violence it preyed upon itself to wipe. Gone. Gone. Gone.
Practical? Relevant?
Gone. -
Look, when it comes to resisting tyrants... I'm good with it.
But the seemingly scandalous thing about Liber OZ is that it's not overtly limited to big, bad governmental threats where there would be a large consensus in justifying such an act of war.
It reads as if it is universally applicable, which.... I mean, you'd have to be a psychopath, but it does read as if it's universally applicable even to small scale situations like the maladjusted teen who isn't allowed to "dress as he wills" at school. That, of course, is why we furrow our brows and think, "What the hell?" But we're not given anything to qualify it, which is why it's such a scandal - something Crowley seemed to love fomenting.
I actually just read it as applicable to tyrannical governments and shake my head at the more scandalous interpretations.
What's your take? You gonna kill the school principal for enforcing the dress code?
-
Yes.
I get that we are stone age humans emerging from 6,000 years of patriarchy, and so it's going to be confusing to some of us to be living at such a time of peace and prosperity. There is a natural desire of the overwhelmed to blow it all up and return to simpler survival.
Or we could grow up. A person deciding on how to live in harmony with their True Will needs to consider the time and place of their birth, as well as their current time and place.
My current time and place is such that if someone wants to murder someone over the Liber Oz "right" to not bake a cake for homosexual people, my strategy would be to go hide in a corner and use my magic phone call the cops who have fast cars and big guns. But yeah, if someone wants to just use their fists, they can be my guest. Let success be your guide.
Back to the main topic: Trump's platform is a conscious rejection of the truth that every man and every woman is a star.
I don't need to have faith in the government to choose a more established, transparent process over a brain-damaged racist. I can look at the results, and choose the best option. And it's going to be flawed. That's ok.
Here's my invitation to Takamba, repeated:
"Maybe you could pick something measurable that you connect with making it easier for the most people to live their true wills, and describe how Trump has improved that metric?"
-
@Avshalom Binyamin said
"Interestingly, I have used up half of my life expectancy without this issue coming up once for me, personally. I may never encounter it. Thanks to the fact that people got together and figured out how to reduce violence in my part of the world."
It's certainly not unimaginable though. As a situation existing for other people, or as a situation that might exist for you some time in the future.
@Avshalom Binyamin said
"Yes, societies are established with violence (or the threat thereof) with the intention of regulating violence. In liberal, representative governments, the whole point is that more people get to decide how violence is allowed to be used, while fewer people actually have to use violence. Getting to be a pacifist is one of the perks."
I respect principled pacifism, and would be in that camp myself on many occasions, though there are things to critique about it. If you're merely delegating violence rather than exercising it yourself however, that is hardly it.
Violence in liberal democracy has been reduced to a certain extent. It remains a part of the normal functioning of society.
If one's project is to eliminate inter-human violence as far as is possible, and one's objection to Liber Oz comes from what one sees to be its glorification of violence,* I can get that. My problem is the trust in the guaranteed permanence of the present order that this reactive response often betrays.
- Regarding this part, it's still more complicated. There can be heroism in violence too, and non-violent interaction can easily be used in a top-down manner to palliate conflicts that need to be addressed. Furthermore, something might look non-violent, with the threat of violence still hidden underneath.
-
@Hermitas said
"Look, when it comes to resisting tyrants... I'm good with it.
But the seemingly scandalous thing about Liber OZ is that it's not overtly limited to big, bad governmental threats where there would be a large consensus in justifying such an act of war.
It reads as if it is universally applicable, which.... I mean, you'd have to be a psychopath, but it does read as if it's universally applicable even to small scale situations like the maladjusted teen who isn't allowed to "dress as he wills" at school. That, of course, is why we furrow our brows and think, "What the hell?" But we're not given anything to qualify it, which is why it's such a scandal - something Crowley seemed to love fomenting.
I actually just read it as applicable to tyrannical governments and shake my head at the more scandalous interpretations.
What's your take? You gonna kill the school principal for enforcing the dress code?"
The real scandalous thing about Liber OZ is that it's so damn simple that apparently it's easily missed.
Man has the right to live by his own law.
Okay. Simple. Argued? Well, let's add a clarification before any debate. The word is "Man." Crowley, in writing about this piece, told us the arguments he'd received (such as "why not 'mankind?') and he made clear. Man means mankind, not a man, not these men or those men, but all man. so..... not mankind because of the one syllable thing.
Unarguable.
Man has the right to eat what he will.
Well, not if it has to be stolen, right? It doesn't say that man has the right to own what he will, and since we have to own something (in a manner of speaking) before we can eat it, it should go without saying.
Don't pretend that Crowley was retarded and didn't think this through. The man was a master chess player, a record-holding mountaineer, an accomplished poet, and a general man about town; don't expect retarded arguments to actually hold up.
Man has the right to think what he will.
I dare you to argue with me! I dare you!
Man has the right to love as he will.
Fact is, some people even believe this isn't even a choice. They be born that way, baby. Rwawr!
and then finally, for those with weak stomach comes the final right. The last right.
Man has the right to kill those who would thwart these rights.
Again, the "Man" thing mentioned above. Not "a man," not "just men," not "some men," but "Man."
Now. As far as Trump goes; the law of change keeps me safe as far as I'm concerned. A lot of work-up over a little nothing.
-
@Victor said
"I respect principled pacifism, and would be in that camp myself on many occasions, though there are things to critique about it. If you're merely delegating violence rather than exercising it yourself however, that is hardly it."
Behaving violently oneself isn't somehow more noble.
I don't object to Liber Oz; I object to violence-glorifying interpretations of it.
I really wonder what any of this has to do with self-called Thelemites embracing white supremacy in the form of Trump.
@I said
"Maybe you could pick something measurable that you connect with making it easier for the most people to live their true wills, and describe how Trump has improved that metric?"
@Takamba said
""
-
@Avshalom Binyamin said
"
@Victor said
"I respect principled pacifism, and would be in that camp myself on many occasions, though there are things to critique about it. If you're merely delegating violence rather than exercising it yourself however, that is hardly it."Behaving violently oneself isn't somehow more noble.
I don't object to Liber Oz; I object to violence-glorifying interpretations of it.
I really wonder what any of this has to do with self-called Thelemites embracing white supremacy in the form of Trump.
@I said
"Maybe you could pick something measurable that you connect with making it easier for the most people to live their true wills, and describe how Trump has improved that metric?"
@Takamba said
""
"If I didn't answer that (and I'm still not answering), it's because a president's effectiveness takes years to measure. What I am seeing is an improved economic landscape, and improving. But I'm not a racist and not a Trump supporter. There seem significant "unscientific" methods by which you must reach conclusions.