10 Comments
Nov 13Liked by Peter Boghossian

Thank you for speaking the truth!

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Nov 13·edited Nov 13Liked by Peter Boghossian

I'm a traditional liberal and I have sent so many of your links to dem friends in denial. We need you as our Secretary of Education - PLEASE!

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🤣 Figures the day after I post something about this video on a prior (and unrelated) subsatck post from you, the next day you have a new post on substack about that video.

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Nov 13·edited Nov 13Liked by Peter Boghossian

Thank you Peter and Reid, yet again!!

You just said with great impact and clarity, what I've been ham handedly trying to say for a few years now.

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author

Reid for the win!

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Of course they won’t quit. Theirs isn’t just a political movement . They believe they are not just morally correct but superior. Once you adopt that mentality anything you do is justified. That kind or thinking leads to things like flying planes into buildings and worse. They will never quit.

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My hope is that my party meets this reconning with humility and curiosity. I've been working on my circle for four years and they are finally seeing our part in this. Fingers crossed. Some of us are ready. Those of my party that have adopted the mentality you speak of - no, nothing will convince them until like the working class, like our men, like POC's that walked - the rest of us who are reasonable and are ready to save this democratic republic un hitch the insanity wagon of identity politics and walk as well. But I am concerned. There are many of us still in denial of our own progressive radical wing. And I fear Peter is right. Radicals will dig in and become even more radical.

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Liberty is just one piece of a human societal equation, cooperation is the/an-other. Liberty has been the priority of the Right, while co-operation (democracy, equality, fairness, etc.) has been -- IMO in direction reaction to (real and perceived) excesses of the Right -- the priority of the Left. Both need to be respected to have a healthy society. My probably silly hope is that someday their artificial separation, and war, started at some point (by Marx?) after the French Revolution that introduced them (liberte, egalitie, fraternite) will soon be repaired.

What we're fighting here is neither Right nor Left, it's Totalitarian-hijacked Leftism. But as Peter points out, no matter what happens, we're going through the fire first. Unfortunately, most humans love war; even when they eschew bloody kind, they are always taking bloodthirsty sides one way or another, and whether about imaginary or real things.

[ EDIT: Clarified above that it's R and L on the one hand, and Totalitarianism on the other; and corrected an unforgiveable Eric vs Peter mistake :P ]

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Exactly right! The US isn't out of the woods yet! The righteous progressives in blue states, who still control every institution from education to health care to local government to churches, are going to double down and spiral even further leftward with Trump as their nemesis, like a kind of polarized dance off a cliff. My New England neighbors see their quasi religious Social Justice movement as a redo of the civil war against the redneck south, complete with an underground railroad for the “persecuted” (trans and migrants). It will take massive pressure and concerted efforts to turn the ship in blue states. If not we could see them seek to unite with Canada and the UK; political partition of the US is being seriously discussed. Unless moderates find their voices in blue states, be ready for the People's Republics to take land back by any means necessary. The writing is literally on the wall.

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I'm afraid that although not long ago I spoke of admiring this guy, Peter Boghossian, and some of his work remains admirable, see for example his U. of Tube postings of his useful game STREET EPISTEMOLOGY, I find his current talk at the Danube Institute in Budapest most troubling in tone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfW5BpdMdhg&list=PLYNjnJFU-62t25_8aD9loEqZL9J4p-82p

This direction he has taken strikes me as cause for concern. That he'd even accept an invitation to speak at the advocacy mill rather than think tank dba "Danube Institute"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danube_Institute

suggests his critiques of U.S. institutional academia have veered off into a pre-set mindset and abandoned the searching qualities that made his very use of academia as a viable forum for discussion and peer review so apt, his critiques of the current state of academia notwithstanding. In principle and more often than in the quarters of Wall Street or lobbyists where seeking after zero-sum personal gain frames the rules of the schoolyard competition, peer review and clarifying discourse is open to competing views and is not based on favoring bullying or restricting opposing views.

I've always trusted those who welcome open debate and are comfortable with uncertainty and discovery. Yet, I don't get that feeling from this side of Boghossian's advocacy any more than I do from listening to Trump or his legion of backers debate or discuss any issue... With the exception of those backers that have shown ease and comfort with discovery and shifting perspectives to accomodate a pluralism of viewpoints. For example this lecture and Q&A with students and faculty

by Yanis Varoufakis at Tubingen U. (in English language) that makes the case for pluralism in that least likely place to find it, Capitalistic Economics and its sacred spaces of Wall Street and Open Markets designed for seeking advantage in the endeavour of concentrating personal wealth at the expense of others:

Yanis Varoufakis: From an Economics without Capitalism to Markets without Capitalism | DiEM25

DiEM25

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Sorry to speak here of my disillusionment now with Prof Boghossian's message at Danube Institute and of my own being such a downer to the rah-rah objectives of the Neo-Feudal Right Wing aligned behind our President Elect (no case would I make for this election being rigged. The American Electoral Majority has spoken in ways it has spoken in the past and no doubt will again in the future in ways that I myself would never endorse....)

I'm serious about welcoming opposing views to my own darkening vision,

Tio Mitchito

Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers

Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of Atonement Seekers)

Media Discussion List\Looksee

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