Trump and Metaphysics: A Continuing Thought-stream

Trump and Metaphysics.


1.

There is a breakdown in the existentia, Trump signals this breakdown and any philosopher who follows him down that path will be led to insanity, absolutely. Yet Trump himself is not the breakdown but only one instance of it, a concentrated instance that represents the groundswell of the collapsing structures qua collapse; those structures are the very structures of meaning as such, representing not only the emotions and those from which the emotions derive but also representing the existential as such and as pure form: meaning in the specific as the content of the human reaches its accord with meaning in the general as the pure form of the existentiality, and make no mistake that human being is very much this existentiality in terms of that in the human which is human in the most independently free gesture thrown before all the universality of existence.

The structures within the Existentia are always in part being created and destroyed, building in themselves and collapsing in themselves, for this structurality is an analogous existence to any realm in which violent forces play out, like the natural world itself which symbolizes so well the endless struggle between life and entropy, death---yet this struggle fails to penetrate the heart of this nature in so far as that heart is already composed of that in and by which this struggle has already been achieved, realized, and sublimated qua struggle, which is to say has found its stability and center. In approaching the infinitely particular expression of the universal idea of this nature, that struggle which plays out upon the surfaces and world of this nature has become its own true essence, self-realized not yet as "being" but as a condition for beings. And make no mistake this idea is precisely that, an idea as such in so far as an idea, any idea, is that which it is. The idea "of" something has already been instantiated in reality and as idea and the ideas which we have of them bring us about full circle back into this purity of the essence of the reality of the beings for which our idea is idea, conscious is conscious as the consciousness of an object that has presented itself as possible within a language of some particular form of ideation. The language is itself a "being" and too an idea, one that enables the ideas upon which the circles are closed together to give rise to what we call understanding, and this language is rooted deeply in the being of that being for which it is language, as both biology and existentiality. 

Back to Trump and the collapse, it is never the case that simply one building is in opposition to one collapsing; there are always many buildings and many collapsings, the Existentia is the "fullness" of the spaces that are defined and capable of being defined in terms of both the building and the collapsing. This is dialectical: every being is a kind of temporary stabilizing of these two movements, temporary only in the sense that it is a stability with respect to its relative relations to other similar beings and spaces in which similar building and collapsing is going on. Certain more complex and derivative beings will be more internally displaced as they will contain more contradictions as the many oppositions of the many building and collapsing movements within those beings qua structure and logic, and here must we understand the political as something especially catered to the logic of mutuality of complexity of those beings in whom and to whom the most oppositional forces obtain. In whom is the unconsciousness of this being, both as structure and form and as non-conscious content, while for whom is the kind of externalized movement of action which is a world and a valuing. Every political idea and every politician---for a politician in this sense of politics is only an idea---instantiate certain relations among the movements among the content and form oppositions. In this way the same politician or political idea can be both hailed and despised for the very same reason, namely because of how certain preponderance of contents or forms construct the relativity of the perspective upon which movements are perceived and judged, are compared and contrasted to (which means as) oneself. The breakdown of the political itself, which is represented in Trump and his followers, is in this way both hailed and despised for the very same reason and therefore acts as a pure Sign by which the valuer and judger himself and herself, the beings for whom this breakdown is an issue, are seen in the totality of that in them on which the perfection of the image as Sign is reflected and is capable of being reflected. When a breakdown in the categories occurs this is due to the predominance of the collapsing movements having come together to destabilize the possibility of the building into subjectivity for which the former meaning has been derived, again as both form and content, namely that the oppositional tension is for a moment dispelled, the "break" in being between the productive and destructive forces is itself and for this one short moment broken, and what shines through is the pure light of valuation as such which is precisely ourselves as such and nothing besides. The break in the "break" opposes the tension to itself by removing that tension and thereby freeing the conditions of tension into material being; these conditions were only in tension because they were in tension, in direct historical material fullness of the exhaustion of the spaces of the world, but by the "magic" of the idea this state can be disrupted as soon as that tension abates for the length of a moment, that moment which has achieved the image of a collapse to such degree that any corresponding building for which the collapse has been collapse qua tension becomes now impossible. In this case the function of building stalls, and the irony is that this also means that the function of collapse also stalls, for each is truly defined by its relation to the other. But in this situation the image shines forth as the total terror and alien ugliness of the pure absence in which judging being can no longer codify or explain itself. Precisely in the sense that being had before judged, it now fails to judge; precisely in the sense that being had before not judged, it now judges. 


Trump is precisely this very image: he both frees and closes off at the same time and to such an extent that the freeing and the closing off are, for a moment, confused with each other and seem to become each other. This "moment outside of time" is again both hailed and despised at the same time, which really means that "to hail" and "to despise" achieve their operational universality, although this universality is only to be made operational in the activity and actuality of the subject and never as just any idea--the theoretical approach is sublated, in the purity of the idea, to the very same extent that it has already become the actuality of a subject. 


Trump is the non-idea that becomes ideal only and to the exact extent that it is enacted as "non-idea" and as secondary consequence, as derivation having determined its own potential status as an idea, any idea at all. The idea makes itself, through us. This is not some kind of mysterious a-historical "event" but is, again, a result of a serious imbalance between the the building and collapsing movements within the contents of the subject qua subject and qua "life". This imbalance could go either way, could technically just as well also occur through a preponderance of building over collapsing, although this is much less likely because of how built substances within the existential structures, our "human meaning" and our reality, are constructed gradually and accumulatively over time. The logic of collapse lends itself far more to momentary "flash point" realization than does the logic of building, and this too touches upon the moral imperative to side our valuing with building rather than with collapsing, in the general case and of course all other things being equal---as is often said, it is far easier to destroy than it is to create; meaning lies generally on the side of creating, entropy and meaninglessness lie generally on the side of destruction. Some destructions are creative, yes certainly, while others are merely created.

Said another way, "to collapse" only has meaning because something has already been built and now exists, both to collapse and be collapsed as well as to be and stand opposed to that collapsing, whereas the meaning of building is only indirectly the collapse, collapse as a kind of "condition", and this meaning of building is directly and primarily simply more building having already been achieved, as well as generally speaking the movement of building as such. 


The worst perversion and untruth therefore would be to pretend that such moments are simply defined in terms of that larger moment and world that they in fact negatively express, as if the fundamental ablation of tension within being were not this and were simply some kind of lesser, more "reasonable" disproportion. But this ignorance too would simply be an expression of our own, more individual and "subjective" ignorance. A lack of philosophy, even in such "moments outside of time", is still only a lack of philosophy---this lack as ignorance cannot be reversed by becoming ignorant of itself, for that noble power is reserved for that being which is truthful precisely because it does not need to "know" that it is so, which is to say, human being in the general case. For all manner of psychological defenses and offenses are immediately organized around and in service to every "knowing". 


What is true in the world and in human being will therefore be necessarily reduced to untruth in Trump, and in him also will what is untrue in the world and human being be necessarily converted into "truth", into a kind of accelerated realization in real time. This accelerated nature begets many errors; the philosopher who values the one movement over the other becomes by turns either human or inhuman depending on which motif is being converted into which, namely on what direction the existentializing process is moving. As too with the physical theory of Relativity, it is not only the velocity but also the direction of motion that determines the value of the frame of reference. 


2.

Regardless of who wins the US presidential election, it is now time to up the ante:


To set the stage for us, "Lacan's term for this "objective mind" irreducible to the Real of raw reality as well as to the imaginary of our self-experience is, of course, the big Other". --Zizek, Absolute Recoil


This in response to the fact that neurobiology is said to be at the precipice of totally dissolving human freedom ("free will") by ruthlessly exposing the inner workings of consciousness as entirely "unfree"; Zizek's and Lacan's point is that even if neurobiology were to achieve such a radical deconstruction of consciousness in this physiological understanding, it would be essentially meaningless, and not just meaningless to us (because we somehow refuse to care) but actually meaningless itself: in fact it would only become meaningless in so far as such an Idea posed by the empirical (cognitive) sciences would serve to erase our contact with that which is always already independent and unaffected, and continues to be, by such "Ideas", namely this is the same problem of the existential angst and nihilistic despair early philosophers can sometimes go through when approaching the notion of determinism. But even this failure (existential work not yet completed) is only partial at best, a kind of subjective self-arresting at the surface levels, and does not attain in any way to the 'core' of this being. 


Another way that he makes this same point is in referencing something Habermas said: 



Quote :

"The resistance to a naturalistic self-description stemming from our self-understanding as persons is explained by the fact that there is no getting round a dualism of epistemic perspectives that must interlock in order to make it possible for the mind, situated as it is within the world, to get an orienting overview of its own situation. Even the gaze of a purportedly absolute observer cannot sever the ties to one standpoint in particular, namely that of a counterfactually extended argumentation community." 


-Habermas, ...How Can Epistemic Dualism be Reconciled with Ontological Monism?, quoted by Zizek



Disclosing this nature of Freedom's resistance to the over-coding Tyranny we must take a look at the concept of affirmation through the lens of the concept of pure affirmation. What is a "pure affirmation"? It is an affirmation itself, as itself and in so far as qua affirmation it retains the freedom to dispossess itself in ignorance of the conditions, grounds and extensible factors "under the surfaces" of its affirming. What is affirmed may still penetrate into the pure affirmation although here too is invoked some necessity of images: the object of a pure affirmation could only be affirmed as pure affirmation when that in the object which would reference or pay some fidelity to what in affirmation must be dispossessed a priori and qua the purity of the affirming is also itself suppressed and placed behind a "veil of ignorance" (hence the normative utilitarianism of the form of the moral). Objects can be partially purely affirmed but only fully affirmed without "purity" in the affirming, which is to say that some negative content, disease, divorce, difference and irreducible remainder is always present in any "normal" (non-pure) affirmation and that the price paid for raising affirmation into its purity is to raze certain aspects of the object of affirmation to the ground of ignorance so as to prevent the intrusion of elements causal to affirmation's impurity (its "normalness") from entering into the pure affirmation. 


Affirmation whether pure or impure always logically presupposes that which must be affirmed, or calls to be affirmed, or resists being affirmed, or is not affirmed; "to affirm" is precisely to close up something that had formerly been open, differenced and not at all given or "one". To affirm is to make 'one'. The multiplicity of the complex affirming act (of beings such as human beings) is made possible through series of metaphorical, isometric alignments from one being to another, namely from that which affirms to that which is affirmed, and this is obviously a nicely self-valuing circuit. The nature of the purity of affirmation within complex affirmation would perhaps bear quite different contents to its analogous "simpler affirmation" but would retain the selfsame form of purity here. 


In light of this, here is an interesting observation by Zizek, from the same book of his:



Quote :

"Perhaps this transcendental stance is also what ultimately distinguishes Western Marxism from Soviet "dialectical materialism". Dialectical materialism considers historical materialism as a specific ontology, a kind of metaphysica specialis [the reduction of Being to the status of 'a being'; e.g. Christianity's reduction of God to a man, or the specification of Being Itself by way of being's ascendancy through every channel of transcendent approach] of the social being, as the application of the universal laws of dialectics in the social sphere, in contrast to Western Marxism for which collective praxis is the unsurpassable transcendental horizon of our approach to reality, that from which we cannot abstract even in our purest considerations of natural laws. As they used to say, even if humanity is the result of natural evolution, its practical collective engagement with nature always already "frames" our understanding of nature--or, ... nature is a human category. 


In the precise sense, Heidegger is the ultimate transcendental philosopher: his achievement is to historicize the transcendental dimension. For Heidegger, an Event has nothing to do with ontic processes; it designates the "event" of a new epochal disclosure of Being, the emergence of a new "world" (as the horizon of meaning within which all entities appear). Catastrophe thus occurs before the (f)act: the catastrophe is not the nuclear self-destruction of humanity, but that ontological relation to nature which reduces it to techno-scientific exploitation. The catastrophe is not our ecological ruin, but the loss of our home-roots, thus making possible the ruthless exploitation of the earth. The catastrophe is not that we are reduced to automata manipulable by biogenetics, but the very ontological approach that renders this project possible."


--Zizek, Absolute Recoil

 
This has now taken us much deeper. The supposed loss of free will, which runs parallel to the collapsing existential (meaningful) structures of which Trump and his followers are only a consequence and secondary reflection, at the hands of scientific 'objectivity' tells the tale of a far more significant and primary loss, what I would call the central error of subjectivity: the fact that this subject is unable to be a philosophical subject, which is also the fact that philosophy itself is not (yet) philosophy. Let's allow this to sink in: philosophy does not yet exist. 


Trump's appeal is simply that he instantiates the reactive clinging to that in being which would resist its subsumption within larger philosophical categories, and it is no coincidence that this "clinging to" hides itself nearest to precisely where it would apparently be most justified to cling in this way, namely in the presence of the terror of a supposed ontological catastrophe, in this case the specter of the political behemoth of super-state capitalism, globalized military violence and the resulting national subsumption and sublimation, all of which is represented (for better or worse) by Hillary Clinton. The real raison d'etre of Trumpism has nothing to do with that place nearest which Trumpism chooses to position itself for maximum effect; Clinton and the Democratic Party, the mobilization of global capital, and the appearance of an international order of agreements and treaties and laws super-nationally centered are all, for Trump, simply an "event" (signs of a coming epochal transition to a "new world", a new way of framing as stated above) against which it becomes possible to condense the otherwise mostly diffuse array of reactive forces coagulating before the threshold of that epochal turn into something more dynamic, concentrated and 'material'. This logic also broadly defines the political and ideological phenomenon of conservatism as such, of which (the popular image of) Trump is only one particularly virulent example. 


We should locate the truly original catastrophe, and by doing that reposition the ontological project firmly upon the true problem, that problem being as I said the utter loss of philosophy, yet this loss is a longing for something that has never yet existed---there were no golden ages save for those former moments in which the epochal transitions occurred with historically-speaking less accumulated substance and subjective displacement required in that transition, therefore those former moves seem to us today to indicate some sort of "original Edenic perfection" from which state of grace we have now apparently fallen. No, the pure philosophical Act has never existed, the old Edens were just moments of equally radical progress but with less inertial and entropic resistance given that each successive such moment bears within itself more of this sort of resistance and 'weight' simply for the fact of having more history to assume to itself, and too must also assume to itself all the former such moments of which the present epochal moment is simply the most recent in a long chain stretching backward into antiquity. And the very problem of the false dichotomy within the political today, exampled best by the always simplistic "either/or" logic between Clinton and Trump, globalism and nationalism, freedom and fascism, or the society and the state, namely the logical fallacy of excluded middle, very precisely reveals the deeper lack upon which this whole "philosophical" edifice is turning. This is a moral abandonment within the ontological image, of which Trumpism is the example par excellence and is a secondary duality, reflected in all of the surface dualisms and polarized ways of thinking, and especially reflected in philosophy's own collapsing into Trumpist-type thinking, which masks the primary duality at the heart of the subject as such and as self-displaced within the more truthful categories of its own existence. 


If Trump wins then the progress of the world in its larger epochal moment of the existential structures of meaning will stall, reactionary forces having taken over, and entropy will get the upper hand as the inertial mass of the Existentia crashes into the unyielding moment of the stalled and terrorized present; while the specter of war is always terrifyingly present, and more so the further along the world progresses in its march toward philosophical (truly powerful, aware and conscious) being, this present threat of violence and overt disorder which is gradually being contained at the margins to make space for the developing "progressive being" at the heart of the human world, a new being in terms of which and once it reaches the required developmental scope will achieve a total reinvention of the old psychic categories of violence and war, namely a sublimation of these in the new and newly human idea of Freedom; ushering in yet another epochal phase, will collapse into a renewal of war and violence in the former terms, as the brutal savagery of an even less coordinated and less philosophical, subjectively developed historical temporality. The whiplash return of the past in the denied necessity of the present-to-future always represents smaller cycles within the larger historical progression, cycles in which the severity of violence and the impotence of truth reach their maximum heights (e.g. Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union, and perhaps and unless we can avoid it, Trump's America).


Life is "grooving in the aesthetics of being" (-anonymous), life dances ahead of itself in the curves of progress and change adapting itself spontaneously to the natural elements in transition and so blends present, past and future into one Act; the ontic proceeds from this grooving movement and as a kind of fidelity to that deeper dynamic, while the ontological dimension struggles more obviously with the tension of forces arising from the inertial entropy latent to every ground on which being lived to dance away with itself. As philosophers we should never mistake the tyranny of the dance, the fact that self-valuing had "sharp edges", for the tyranny of the ground-pull whose entropic catharsis is only darkness, stasis, and death. Nor should we ever mistake that latter for that former.

The reason I focus on Trump and not Clinton so much is because to me Trump is the far more significant phenomenon. Clinton has near-zero philosophical significance, whereas Trump and what he represents has a lot of philosophical significance. Nor do I intend to be absolutely critical of Trump, there are some positives about him too of course. However I believe we must be very careful because even with those positives we cannot not allow ourselves to get sucked into his "frame of thinking" in so far as we absorb both his errors and his strengths. As you know I reject all or nothing thinking, so I want to parse Trump into the good and the bad; this requires a will to an objective view, and I know we all share this will here.

I do not at all discount what Fixed has said about his journalism days and the massive damage caused by the current neoliberal machine. His society turning from an open into a closed one; I want this to be our next area of concerted investigation. How and why has US policy causes Fixed's society to turn from open to closed? What horrors have you seen, as to the consequences of US neoliberal Clintonism?


In addition I will repost here three points that I posted in Ethics, hoping we can use these three points to establish some common agreements among us. Please refine these statements toward the common agreement as you see it is possible to be found:


1. Trump is being judged based almost entirely on the lewd statements he makes; I agree this isn't entirely fair to him, and his ideas, policies and value do not reduce to such statements. But as I also told Fixed, it's hard for mostly people and even intelligent ones to separate the two things out, his ideas/value from the disgusting things he says. As Zizek called it, Trump is defecating in public. We all defecate, of course, but it's not very sound advice to do that publically if you're trying to get elected to public office.

2. Clintonism has fucked things up to an extreme extent, US foreign policy has messed up the world and the ME especially. I agree with Parodites' statement when he talked about how the US should use its constitution as a model and any other countries that want to adopt that model could do so, but that we haven't done that in the US because of how corrupt our politics has become. The Bush and Clinton years have represented doubling down on invasive foreign policy, economic and real warfare, fucking with Russia for basically no good reason, and trying to institute US cheeseburger hegemony across the planet as much as possible. We all know Clinton is a liar and not to really trusted, but we know this at the deep intuitive level.

3. We definitely need "outsiders" in politics. I don't mean complete outsiders, we still need politicians who know how to use the political system and who understand it and can get things done, and we also need these semi-outsider politicians to value compromise just a little bit. If the GOP can come up with come candidates who have moderate political experience and genuine interest to compromise to get things done, and who aren't ideological hacks on issues like global warming, then there might be a chance that this momentum Trump created will continue and transition into something good down the line. We also need a real statesman, something clearly Trump has a hard time with. Someone like Trump but with better manners in public to avoid shooting himself in the foot, but with Trump's independence to call out the bullshit on the Clintons et. al., but also with a willingness to compromise and look sincerely at facts around issues that are ideologically polarized. The good thing about Trump is how he broke open the GOP party and now it's possible that the ideological stranglehold can be reduced in a large way.

Areas where I agree with Trump (I will work these into a philosophical analysis later):

1. We should have more border enforcement to stop influx of drugs and gangs from Mexico (not saying we need a giant wall, though).

2. The Affordable Care Act is a disaster (but I think we need to abolish health insurance and move to single payer).

3. We do need more dialogue with and respect for Russia.

4. Foreign wars in the Middle East need to stop or become much more rational and less insane (I don't want isolationism, I want better interventions).

I agree with the points that I understand. Point 3 is an exception; a purely domestic issue of which I dont know the specifics. Could you give me an explanation of this "single payer" idea, and also of why you like it? A literal wall may not be necessary - though Im not sure about it. It may be the cheapest solution. Better would be for Mexico to get its shit together, but Ive had the idea for a long, long time that it's not they who decided to use the country as a drugfunnel, but the guys importing the drugs. There are a couple of Texas border towns that I have very bad feelings about.

To do justice to politics let's first do justice to economics. Allow me to reinterpret Marx into the most favorable light: people want to give their surplus value to something, capitalism is a system of maximizing the utility of this desire toward socially coherent long-term ends in so far as capital accumulations are organized (read literally: organs) in terms of themselves-- a self-valuing. Capitalism creates an elaborate extended system that the individual can participate in to maximize his or her contribution of surplus value in such a way that this surplus-giving is not wasted as heat-loss. We are metaphysically converted into "pure value" by our jobs, the ironic negative reflection of this is the money we are paid; we have to be paid money because our contribution was equally immaterial and intangible, a purity of fluid valuing-medium.

Marx thought people want to own their own surplus value-giving, but they want the exact opposite, to contribute something. We metaphorically lose a part of ourselves (given value-energy, "work") precisely to gain the divinity of sacrifice; or in psychoanalytic terms we displace ourselves in one dimension to ward off displacements elsewhere, we repress our awareness of something (our love of sacrificial giving) to be able to enjoy this giving-loss as pure feeling, the movement out and then back in again like an ocean tide. Marx was correct in his mechanics of how capitalist society works but he missed the deep spiritual piece of self-sacrificial love-pain, which truly drives us all. Expressed more vulgarly in a very common meaning: people put up with shit at work so they can then enjoy complaining about it; Hegel said in PS about this, how the boy getting his ears boxed for disobedience enjoys this because he was the cause of its happening.

Love wants to give, Nietzsche knew this-- the sun's happiness that would be nothing had it not those for whom it shines. The history of economics is the history of figuring out how to maximize value-giving with value-accumulation and use, namely: capitalism's sublime self-referentiality of the logic of liberated Capital.

I can fully agree with that.



I suggest that we take a quick look at the concept "dharma" in this light. It is essentially the surplus value as it is configured into surplus-culture.

Continuing my analysis (I didn't mean to post that yet, wanted to tie some more together) Trump represents the contradictory logic of love-pain giving: everything he says contains an element of pain and an element of love (formulated as hope), he skillfully combines pains with hopes seamlessly which skill he probably learned as a longtime nodal point of huge capital surpluses. At the same time he was free from needing to "work"-make this due to inheriting and so probably internalized the givingness psychic overflow of capitalist temporalities without needing to sour himself with the long grind of slow painful accumulation and doubt that most people are required to pass though. He naively thinks capital-ism is the way of the world, liberated capital flows as the veritable Spirit-image par excellence, ultimate sign of life itself; of course in an indirect way he is right. Trump resonates with a metaphysical truth that even he doesn't understand and his followers don't understand but they love him for personifying it. This excess is everywhere in him: his crude remarks, his chauvinism, his rhetorical method (hyperbole, pathological level lying), his absolute faith in himself. This is actually why Christians love him despite his questionable morals: Trump is a Christ-figure. By this I mean something very specific: he is an attempted manifestation in living flesh of a pure metaphysical truth. Even his contradictions on things like taxes and outsourcing (he wants to abolish the very tax inequalities that he uses, he wants to end the very outsourcing practices that he uses) are in fact simply expressions of this metaphysical principle that we can call the 'spirit of capital-ism.'

This is why his faults only make him stronger. His many faults signify the ontological status of his being this incarnation of a pure spirit-principle. The very fact that he exists as political viability at this point now proves that "capitalism" has already won. Economy will stratify in social life of production activities like a body in perfect cellular-organic lock-step determination so that the contrary absolute freedom of Mind can live; the social organism isn't truly alive so the closest parallel to the mind of the individual body would be, for the social body, liberated Capital. This has never existed before, capital for its own sake with global distribution. Next will come robotics and autonomous sentient AI to replace the role of human capital in the machinery of mass production (I.e. no more Foxconns) not to free humanity from wage-labor as Marx thought but to free Capital to a much higher ontological order of Production.

It doesn't matter if Trump wins or loses, the differences that will obtain either way are inconsequential from the vantage of the higher metaphysical truths. What matters is that Trump exists and existed as a Sign posed at the critical historical juncture of Clintonian nihilism.

The future is a damn beautiful thing to behold.

I'll write more in response soon but just a preliminary point: It is important that he wins. If Clinton wins she will tank our economy, the globalist regime will be brought fully into focus, and she will allow migration to the extent that it basically creates a unipolar state where it is impossible to beat the Democrats. I view Trump not as a breakdown in the existentia, but simply in this political structure. The parties have become so identical because they both are based around supporting globalism and the like. Capitalism is not the push behind Trump's campaign, it's a resistance against the melting together of the parties, and a resistance against globalism, which will cost the US it's position at the head of the world stage if it is allowed to continue. And his supporters are not a bunch of rabid fanatics, I've talked to them and they seem to understand this. His supporters are really not thinking about pro-capitalism, they are thinking about the dangers globalism poses to the US specifically and to the world at large, as well as the fact that none of these politicians are distinguishable from one another- the two parties have become incapable of differentiating themselves. The last few presidential races and debates have just been two guys agreeing with one another on basically everything and laughably trying to figure out how to differentiate themselves from one another.

I don't think Marx was correct on his system of capital and class-struggle. He is relevant only in understanding what I call capital in the first phase, which is based around free markets and competition. After that, in the second and third phase, free market competition has nothing to do with how capital is managed, surplus-value is no longer the driving point in the system, nor does class-struggle provide much explanatory power.


I've gone into great detail on the three phases of capital I envision, using historical examples and integrating a few different views from both Marx-Lenin, Braudel, Baudrillard, Freud, myself, etc. The details of the second-stage are very relevant with relation to Trump:

--


[Braudel argued that capitalists have typically been monopolists and not, as is usually assumed, entrepreneurs operating in competitive markets. He argued that capitalists did not specialize and did not use free markets, thus diverging from both liberal (Adam Smith) and Marxian interpretations. In Braudel's view, the state in capitalist countries has served as a guarantor of monopolists rather than a protector of competition, as it is usually portrayed. He asserted that capitalists have had power and cunning on their side as they have arrayed themselves against the majority of the population.[22] ]



This second stage I will then start calling "Braudelian capitalism". The first is as I pointed out similar to Lenin's view of it.

The state gets involved in the second stage in a way similar to what Braudel describes, then in the third stage states enter into the international banking system based on debt, with the US at the center, allowing the current globalist regime to put itself in place. The understanding of capital going through certain definite stages of state-absorption is integral.


This three-stage mechanism is on top of a centuries long process in which capitalism got to the point that the first stage could be initiated. European feudal society was based in a redistribution of wealth and resources, but in America a transformation took place: the central redistribution involved, not "capital" generally conceived, not goods and resources in the abstract, but rather, surplus-value. Hence our slave plantations; the idea was to get more value than is required to feed the given industry. But this surplus-value thereby produced tends to only pass through social strata in the respective society producing it, creating a wealth disparity between not so much classes of people as geographical regions, until it can no longer be exported in order to generate value from the host society's true capital: (hence the capital is lost to the process of state-absorption) slave labor created certain things, then those things were transferred to the North where slaves could not prove profitable, where the surplus-value could not be created. Eventually, the surplus-value accumulates in the form of a wealth disparity between, in this case, the Northern and Southern US: that caused the civil war. But leading up to WW1, this stalling of the capital-absorption took place on a much larger scale, as I've gone over: in Lenin's language, the surplus-value could not be effectively exported, and from that economic destabilization, WW1 began. Then the second stage, Braudelian capitalism, took effect, stalled, and brought on WW2.

In this second stage, the State gets involved as Braudel says. But for a different reason. The State must make sure that surplus-value does not stagnate in a disparity between social strata and remains exportable. Monpolization begins. Once that failed, an international banking system was created in order to ensure the exportability of surplus-value: through egregious unpayable national debts between those countries participating in the globalized system. As long as the terrific debts hold, surplus-value keeps being created and exported between nations, thereby generating value from the true capital holdings of those states, preventing the capital from being lost to the ongoing state-absorption. And it is this third stage that is now ending, or stalling rather.


So you really have to clearly separate certain ideas in this: value, surplus-value, [began in the first stage in America, ie. slave-labor and plantations] exportable value, [what is needed to generate value from a state's actual capital- without it, capital becomes useless and economic destabilization begins] capital, [land, resources, etc.] capital-absorption, [began in the second stage with Braudelian monopolization] and state-absorption of capital. [ie. tertiary capital proper, also the fundamental mechanism driving the three stages from behind: the process whereby the State gains utilization over actual capital, a nation's resources. Reaches its peak in the globalist banking system around national debts.]

This is the force behind the global-state, behind globalism, the full relinquishing of the world's capital to the State's control. This process can be broken right now, when it is weakest. If Clinton loses anyway.

Taxation. Complicate the tax codes and make it so that very rich people at the head of companies alone can afford to hire the legions of lawyers necessary to negotiate a lesser tax burden with the State, while the common man cannot do so, he can't afford to pay for the legal expertise. The common man will continue to lose out while the companies concentrate more wealth. That is a big way this monopolization is given assistance by the State.

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This is relevant because Trump's fiscal policy is based on a revision of the tax code which will have the effect of limiting the extent to which the state can facilitate monopolization.


And globalism is not an ideological or political structure for me: it is simply the effect of this tertiary mechanism. [Liberal secular humanism following the death of God appears to mythologize this empty space as ever having been the site of an ideological conflict.] Since a little before ww1, this three phase structure has been directing human history and culture, and if Trump wins it can possibly be escaped. If Clinton wins, I see it as continuing, with a stalling of the third stage just as the other two stalled, and then a further expansion into a fourth stage I haven't thought about because I don't want to imagine Clinton winning and this mindless structure continuing to govern world history and the human spirit. If you want a society of enlightened, philosophically awakened individuals or a government of muses, well then this three stage structure is your enemy because it's the reason we have the dehumanized consumer culture that we do. The reason the entire media and both the Rep and Dem, left and right establishment, is attacking Trump is because they are all on the side of that system, it's not because Trump said the word pussy.

The communist regimes attempted to seize total control of capital, the actual resources, through the State, from within the second stage, and of course failed, as this has not been accomplished even in the third stage. But Clinton ensures that this system will just keep marching forward- toward that goal. This is why I'm so pro-Trump: it's because I'm so anti-this system I'm describing.

The reason I don't think it matters significantly if Trump or Clinton wins is because I see the march of capitalism continuing no matter what. I am not overly worried about the state attempting to overly appropriate capital to itself from the private sector because 1) capital should be a combination of state and private control, and 2) the specific configuration of how much state vs private control of capital that occurs will naturally gravitate into the most efficient ratio and organizations over time for the simple reason that any such configurations that do not work will... not work, will fall off as the old communist regimes have done. I don't have any moral or ideological qualms about however much ratio of capital control in state vs private "should" be the case, this is as I see it a quite natural process that works itself out over time by simple natural selection mechanism, namely those configurations that prove most effective, useful and beneficial will end up taking place in the long run. Both government and private individuals and corporations can be very bad managers of capital, and both can also be very good managers of capital. Dividing the management/control of capital into an either/or of state or private is not an accurate or useful demarcation in my view.

As I wrote about in Existential Capitalism, capitalism is the default and is not going anywhere; it is the most natural, vital and powerful expression of socioeconomic principle organizing force ever to exist upon the earth. Capitalism is a self-valuing; selective, joyous, willing to power, excessive, prone to some mistakes and imperfections, etc. From the perspective of the natural world an edified self-valuing is a terrible beauty: like a hurricane it reorganizes with massive creative destructions and asserts an aesthetic standard, it is an aesthetic standard. Storms are beautiful things.

Your theory about the concentration and exportability of capital is good, I want to add on here with the idea of an ontological scale of Production: capital itself, and value and surplus value thesemlves, are not the ultimate notions here since there comes into play a continuum that we can call the relative scale of the powers of production, which involves mass production in manufacturing and materials techniques, intelligent knowledge of how to achieve results efficiently and scale up productive processes, scientific and technological development, distribution and use of capital and values/surplus value. Imagine a world in the near future where a couple dozen "production hubs" exist in various places on the planet and even a couple in orbit around the earth, each hub is roughly a 10 to 50 mile radius area of extremely advanced and complex manufacturing machinery mostly run on AI and robotic automation; these hubs input massive quantities of raw resources and output nearly everything that is needed for human life: food, tools, ready-made structures, engines, vehicles, space ships, computers, clothing, books, medicines, household items, all of which is distributed throughout the world as a pure excess. Not only these hubs also but a whole ecosystem of robotic distribution and construction that can go anywhere and work on any kind of building project or problem, with some human assistance and guidance but primarily run by intelligent machines. Humans are not going to be running material production and supplying work-labor forever, eventually robotics and some kind of AI will take over, this is basically inevitable as I see it. In this light, then, I can't get too wrapped up about what the state or private business is doing-- regardless if Clinton wins and state reaches its fingers further into capital, or if Trump wins and the private business sector increases its own relative control, the same progression is taking place: Existential capitalism is driven at the metaphysical level, and Trump is a pure Sign of this fact.

Yes the tax code is obscure and burdensomely complex, but this too is somewhat natural: an advanced complex industrial technological society will require equally complex legal codes and financial systems, and what you point out about how only the wealthy can access expensive lawyers and expert advice is quite true, but this too is also natural. The more scaled up and comprehensive the sphere of any given capital machinery, the more complex and substantial and expensive will be the bureaucratic or financial-legal architecture by which that capital must navigate its own production and distribution, simply because it's all derivative: larger spheres of capital power involve many more layers of effects and influences and participate in still more layers beyond themselves. I do not see either the state or the private sector as an enemy or as a limit, both are needed polarities that together achieve optimum efficiency of regulation of Capital toward Production.

Here is the main problem as I see it: human beings as individuals and as cultures are still deeply entwined in this productive architecture, we cannot extract ourselves from it nor do we want to, nor should we want to. But this results in slavery, exploitation of third world peoples, first world ennui and over-work burnout, disorganization that leads to tragedies of the commons, Foxconns, etc... and leads to opportunities for humans whether in the state or private business to assert their own pathological control and personal ends against the larger architecture of the capital-productive system, for instance the kind of destructive monopolies you mention, or the political games that prevent exporting capital across national boundaries leading to impetus for wars as you also point out. These problems aren't problems of capitalism itself, they are problems of the human impositions upon capital attempting to existentialize itself. And the irony is that true human being isn't even part of this kind of imposition either as politics or economics, this imposing factor is a remainder within human, self-valuing being, the remainder of this being attempting to approach something using the wrong and outdated 'emotional codes' and thought-forms. Human being is a space of freedom and meaning that fills in the "capital world" in just the same way that the human subjectivity and mind fills in the "body world", the absolute regularity of the organic body that is required as an "other" against which Mind appears. Economics of capital and production is just this kind of "body" that is slowly becoming stratified and deterministically regulated, as Zizek said we can imagine all sort of personal, cultural or emotional freedoms today but we cannot even imagine raising taxes a little bit-- yes precisely, but where Zizek bemoans this fact from the Leftist angle I view it as a sign of the growing logic of Economy as entirely separate from the logic of human being and self-valuing. Economy is precisely this domain that must trend toward and into absolute fixed regulation and determination qua capital production and distribution systems, so that the "Mind" of the human species (our subjectivity, culture, free thought and expression, values, aspirations, dreams, etc.) can finally achieve its own liberation.

"namely those configurations that prove most effective, useful and beneficial will end up taking place in the long run"

But effective to what end?

Note that fascism equals a society carried  by effectivity for its own sake. Marxism has always led to fascism, wherever it took hold, in Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the Farc, you name it - as this systemism is the very logic it expounds.

The human has no place in Marx. He is never mentioned.


Also, there is for the rest of the world an absolute difference between Clinton and Trump - would this not be of consequence to the US as well?

It has become a strange mix of Marxism and solipsism, the US - Internationalist thought running its inner workings, but international reality being absolutely denied.



Personal -- no pre-existing system is able to incorporate my work. I am too strong. Only the system we are bringing into the world as we speak, a philosophical Nation, in so many words, will be able to carry me - and only at its maximum capacity.

This is self-valuing logic. All meta-systems will crumble away around it, as it brings about an ecosystem of human value, naturally drawn from the earth, and the human being will be allowed to sink into its own nature, and find its place on Earth, and the billions now serving only as bacteria to a botched theory-in-practice, some ideology or religion, may gradually discover unmediated, individual existence.

How all this will happen depends on these, and the next elections. If the fascists win, it will not be in America that humanity will grow on - it will likely be Europe, as the US will lose its control entirely and the population will be plunged into despair, as Europeans are free to decide that the USA is as contemptible and contemptuous as the worst the world has ever seen. But if Trump wins, the US is an impressive example, and all will fear its wrath and hope for its gifts. That is the true condition, the one Marx saw as evil - the condition of "Zeus" - a high standard. A standard that isnt just attainable to any sucker that picks up a pamphlet or self-help book, but that requires both virtue and fortune.

This is the world - without the fickle element of fortune determining our course, we are soulless.

As Pezer said: Yeah, I'll play dice with God. That is noble. That is nobility itself.


The only thing important about humans is their individual quality. We wise ones cultivate their quality, and woo destiny. The foolish ones discard their quality to be included in a group in terms of a more common quality and forsake Being.

My design, as per the Pentad, is always to group in terms of difference. All fascists, Marx foremost (Ive discovered by explicating him that he is the fascist), will separate by difference, and group in terms of homogeneity - which will be enforced to facilitate the grouping.

Fixed Cross wrote:

"namely those configurations that prove most effective, useful and beneficial will end up taking place in the long run"

But effective to what end?

Effective to the ends of liberating Capital up the ontological chain of Production. The economy drives toward its own ends, like self-valuing the economy qua capital-ism is an end in itself. This is problematic in how it produces gaps and excesses between the capital world and the human world, but those gaps are just necessities and are errors/limits being worked out naturally over time. Human values impose themselves upon capital as they should, but this never fundamentally alters the nature of capital or economy, and never will.

The mind cannot fundamentally alter the body or remake it in the mind's own image-- all that can happen is that the body can become strong and determinisricslly centered enough to hold its own and act as a reliable ground for the mind. In the future human beings will use the economy to push human values just like how we use our bodies to push and enact the will of our minds/spirits. But first economy must grow strong and deterministically centered enough to be capable of being used like that.

Humans today are still trying to live through economy, as if the mind could of live through the body and gain its raison d'etre that way-- no, that is just a confusion amounting to perversion. But this isn't an absolute separation either, we need our bodies and we enjoy and associate our bodies, and mind and body work together and share existential roots in each other; and yet they remain governed by entirely different metaphysical principles.

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Note that fascism equals a society carried  by effectivity for its own sake. Marxism has always led to fascism, wherever it took hold, in Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the Farc, you name it - as this systemism is the very logic it expounds.

The human has no place in Marx. He is never mentioned.

Fascism in society is akin to narcissism in the individual. A kind of juvenile phase of desperate self-clinging because true self-being, character, joy, and natural health are still largely lacking. When we are unhealthy and don't understand why we must grasp whatever salient images of power most appear to us; as Nietzsche said, "you are not free because you still search for freedom".

To me, fascism isn't a disease, it is a symptom. And one can't sure a disease and restore health by addressing symptoms.

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Also, there is for the rest of the world an absolute difference between Clinton and Trump - would this not be of consequence to the US as well?

I'm not convinced that this difference is something so black and white. Right now the US neoliberal Clintonian nihilism setup is sustaining much of the other world economies by the US importing a billion dollars a day from the rest of the world; equally it is the case that while highly imperfect the US global military distribution in bases and armadas around the world is still an effective deterrent against large-scale military mobilized violence between nations. If Trump wants to stop the US's role as global center of the world economies and global distributed military apparatus, I can see a lot of negative consequences for many peoples and nations around the world coming from that.

As I said, I don't want isolationism, either in military or economics, I want better "interventions".

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It has become a strange mix of Marxism and solipsism, the US - Internationalist thought running its inner workings, but international reality being absolutely denied.

I see the US as the pure capitalist heart of the world. This isn't going to change just because capitalism is both existentializing itself and globalizing itself; but yes there are severe problems and crises that must be addressed. Also I can't see calling the US in any way a Marxist place; the Clinton types are not Marxist in any way, they are just unconscious side-effects of the metaphysical logic and necessity of capital existentializing itself toward higher modes of Production, as upon an ontological continuum of being. Clinton exists to administer and regulate these developmental birth pangs of what will eventually be an economic system entirely unlike what we have today-- a coordinated, automated, deterministically-regulated, global and interstellar spanning network of machinic, robotic tech with AI adaptation that will from then on serve as the metaphorical "body" of the enduring human spirit. Clinton has no philosophical or world-historical significance at all, neither do those of her ilk, which is why I generally ignore her.

Someday people will look back and puzzle about how so much human time and spiritual energy and effort was spent in economic pursuits. But that time is still a long ways off.

Edit: no I'm not saying we will upload ourselves into computers and robot bodies in the future, although there may be some of that heppening by then that isn't at all the point I am making.

Expanding on this idea of autonomous production: this is a subtler idea that just "machines make stuff in huge factories". What I mean more precisely is that the bulk of automatic machinic production in manufacturing will be just that, automated, and rather than rely on humans overseeing this there will be various levels of computer oversight and quality control, with some AI-like "administrators" over that. Humans will still work with those AI in overseeing everything, and much human expertise will still be needed; also, humans will still do a lot of the innovating and designing of products just like we do today. This isn't the communists idea of state central planning that I am talking about here, but just the logical continuation of the already present trend toward automation of industry and replacing human physical labor with robot labor. Human intellectual and creative labor will still be needed in high supply since this future economy will still be essentially a capitalist one driven by supply and demand and by value-attributions from the ground up at the practical real-world level of human life and more local economies.

Capital will continue to expand in both dimensions, as it already is doing: toward external scope and toward internal complexity. Economy will still respond to individual, local and business and state level demands in terms of wants and needs. But increasing scale, complexity and computer assistance will greatly increase the total surplus excess of production as a whole; one easy example of this will be in waste disposal and recycling, almost every product created will end up being recycled back into production. Also, a human or a AI or a group of these together will be able to order things like new spaceships and colonies on other planets simply by giving a directive and the whole system will respond to make it happen. Money will still exist, and people will still have jobs, although it will be possible for a large number of people to choose not to work a traditional paying job and instead contribute in other ways, like entering science, technology, creative arts, political-economic administration and decision making, computer programming, space exploration and an international human species-level "space exploration and military force", and all sort of other kinds of opportunities that don't really exist yet. Basic needs will be met, but most people will still want to work, travel, contribute and socialize and also want to have excess money to spend on additional wealth and pleasures. Humans will still do police and detective work, other humans will still engage in criminal enterprises, whole sub-economies will be set up on other planets and moons and in the space trade and resource gathering enterprises. There will still be merchants selling things for profit, for example. Basically the system we have now but expanded in every logical way possible. Politics and human rights will still be ongoing issues that need to be dealt with all the time.

I am beginning to see the outlines of the situations, the crux of the disagreement on the system and its nature. What you describe as advancing, computer assistance, capital expanding both outward and into detail, etc - I suddenly realized what the USA's infrastructure is like. From your perspective it is possible to imagine a huge progress and increase in technology. But in Northwestern Europe, no expansion is possible anymore. In Holland, there literally isn't a single square meter east of the dunes that isn't man-made or man-changed. All things are computerized, no paper forms exist anymore (and of course we lost our beautiful powerful currency to the soulless Euro - currency has a soul if it is created with true values in mind*) Tarmac is redone every two years. We have the most wifi connections per capita on the planet, and we have NSA databanks, particle colliders, BUK missile factories, both thebiggest port and biggest airport of Europe and, absent Atlanta and China, the world - all sorts of true upper strata technology here because we are a nation of engineers and vast, vast wealth. We have hardly any debt and there is not a speck of dust to be found in the entire country. Whereas in the US, there are mainly broken roads, here and there a cash machine  and a coke machine, and then a bunch of cities where technology does work, though not nearly as well as in Northern Europe. US airports are always giving off the feeling of arriving in the third world, except third world countries make an effort to present their airports as shiny. If you compare JFK and LAX with Moscows, Romes or even Damascus airports, the US seems dirt-poor, let alone if you compare it to Amsterdam-Schiphol. So yes, I can see from within the US it looks like the system has a lot of space to increase. But somehow I get the feeling all the wasteland inside is due to building those systems abroad, where the population isnt as resilient to them, where the population isnt made out of pioneers who value independence foremost.



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So we had Baruch Spinoza on our highest denomination. That all disappeared for Technocracy, efficiency, Systemic Integration.

That's interesting what you mention about Holland. I don't at all mean that everything will be shiny and new and no more natural spaces, such things aren't a part of the way I see the future of capitalism evolving. Of course some of that will happen, undoubtedly. I agree US airports are shabby and roads here often in some stage of disrepair, this can be attributed to resistance here to spend tax money and general resistance of people on government spending at all; same with many public buildings here, social security offices and post offices, those sort of places tend to be set up for functionality only, not image. This is changing slightly at the county levels though, some new courthouses and county government buildings are made to impress with a shiny image of power and futuristic look.

I like architecture and building design, for example the ICC in The Hague is remarkably beautiful. There is great value in building like this, but there is also great value in simplifying in other places to functionality only. I suspect the future will continue to be a stark combination of these two kinds of contrasts.

The US spends all its tax dollars abroad, killing people. That is just how it is now.

Trillions of dollars go into genocide, zero into bridges.

And certainly it is not Capitalism that does this - it is, as Ive said, what I take Marxism to be that does this.

"Internationalists", as the Marxists used to call themselves.

Capitalist logic is impossible under Marxism, as it is the logic of individual power and will. We do not have a Capitalist society now, to my mind - we have a technocratic pseudo-market regulated by special interests.

In Capitalism, demand (real value) determines production. But in our system, demand is irrelevant. Rather, arbitrary, childish fixations are created for people to spend money on, degrading themselves so as to forget that they ever had values or were alive.

Billions and billions of materials and so called protected Iraqi oil just fell under the control of "ISIS", without any resistance, until the Russians stepped in, upon which the US decided to throw some more billions at Al Nusra/Al Quaida as well, which is the situation we have now.

For the money the US handed to ISIS alone, the entire country could be refurbished. Instead that money was used to saw off heads of children.

Ive seen, as Ive said, too much of the consequences of US tax dollars at work abroad - I wonder if Americans learn much about the Iran-Iraq war, in which the French and US were pitted against each other. I grew up with that. Very gritty, very long, very deadly expense of your taxdollars. It never stopped.

In terms of what they are allowed and enabled to do,  Bush Clinton clan is technically owned by the Saudis, the US has been a  vassal state in terms of its foreign policies, so it shouldnt be much of a surprise that the tax dollars end up as they do.

Now, with the Iran payoff (which allows Iran to do exactly what it was paid off not to do, which they could not have done without the payoff), the US has managed to become a vassal to both Saudi Arabia and Iran - two archnemeses! I can not even laugh at that level of incompetence.

I am somewhat in disagreement with the generalization that all US military spending is used for simply "killing people". Again, the US maintains active military presence in and around over hundred countries precisely because existential-globalized capitalism requires this. If the US stops doing it then someone else would need to step in (not likely), or economic relations would fall apart into military ones. I wrote somewhere else here about how nations can trade with each other only when military force is not actualized; I would add that the presence of a potential military force is also just as important. This is "metaphysical" in the following way: individual people can only meaningfully relate to each other when there is an absence of overt violence. This is the idea of peace, not for its own sake but because at any scope or milieu (family, friend, work, national, etc) you need non-violence-based framework for truly human exchanges of meaning to take place. A father who instigated violence in his household is destroying the possibility for truly meaningfully exchanges to take place, for example; a huge international economy of trade among nations is possibly only because open warfare isn't taking place. In this way the US military violences in the ME are definitely stifling that place, preventing true economic conditions from appearing, which may be part of the goal since all we really want from there is oil and to sell them arms.

Another example: the economic divide between state and private sector in capitalism is analogous to the ontological divide between the society and the individual: society and individual cannot be reduced to each other, as terms they are both mutually dependent upon one another as well as eternally apart from one another. This situation can be dismissed by claiming as some do that "societies" do not really exist, that all that exists are individuals, but that is a very unphilosophical way of looking at it. When we look at capital-ism expanding today outwardly and inwardly, building itself in an existential sense, I see this divide between the state and the private business or private individual as a direct manifestation of the mutually dependency plus mutual irreducibility between the fundamental categories of society and individual. This duality exists for a reason, and neither category is "good or bad" in an absolute way, both are absolutely necessary.

Trump as I said is a Christ-figure who represents the metaphysical principle of Capital-ism (existential capitalism) as a pure Sign of this principle enacted materially in the "real" human world today, politically speaking. Since politics is the literal mediating between truth qua "socioeconomy" and "real earthy" human being it makes perfect sense that this Sign appeared where it did, in politics. Before I said that what Trump represents is a threat to the existentia, but this is really just a threat because of how imposing necessary changes to the given political apparatus making it more in line with evolving capitalism. This is Hegelian: Trump is joyful capital excess, but he wants to attack and undermine certain segments of US and global capitalist society-- why? Precisely to refine them, to shake it a bit so that structures settle in slightly new and more stable ways. Trump attacks the very thing he really loves because he sees impediments to this thing he loves, "the government", "other countries", "taxes", "non-capitalists (liberals)", for example are all categories meant to identify things that in their present forms are impeding the natural existentializing of capitalism. For example, reducing US military interventions and releasing pressure with Russia would expand inter-national capitalist opportunities across those spaces; other issues like simplifying the tax code are more ideologically-driven but logically whatever Trump proposes or would want to do must somehow stem from the fact that he a "vision of the future" of continually liberated Capital. Decreasing the relative power of the state is one way of further liberating Capital, since it is always a back and forth dance between the two primary poles of state and private (social and individual) controls. Right now the state level is bloated and ineffectual, so knocking it down a little will only force it to collapse around a more stable and efficient center, inevitably increasing its power. This is how it works for both state and private, social and individual: attacks only make these things stronger, force more necessity of reality upon them, so new excessive powers and joyful contingencies can spring up and the "war" between these two categories can continue. But remember, these polar categorical forms are not the fundamental truth here, the fundamental truth is the "metaphysical" primacy of what is called Capital-ism, liberated capital itself, which is a kind of stand-in for truth and for truth's power.

Clinton is stagnant administration of nihilistic apathy, an entropic tendency within the "lower" of the capitalistic order, while Trump is fresh vital dynamism and excess-love; but both of them serve existential capitalism.

And existential capitalism will globalize whether we like it or not.

And the balance/conflict between what you identify as small scale, local individual more "free market" traditional capitalism and larger state-scale organizing and monopolizing, globalizing capitalism is another example of the polarity and duality that always exists; this daemonism exists with society and individual, with the state and the private business, and it also exists with global and local capitalism. These paired terms are in dynamic ontological daemonic relation to each other.

Clinton wants to keep the old and somewhat fragile socio-existential framework, Trump wants to shake it until it falls into a smaller more stable structure. This too, these two kinds of approaches, is also a daemonic duality.

I was right to see Trump as a threat to the "social human Existentia", but I was wrong to freak out so much about it. Although I still need to elaborate this point in greater detail and precision to see just how a Trump victory will affect the social-human Existentia. Yes I still worry about a gradual side into the hyper-nationalistic fascist direction that Germany took leading up to and under Hitler. These sort of progressions and collapses are subtle things, they can snowball out of control very quickly... civilization is more fragile than we think.

Capable wrote:

I am somewhat in disagreement with the generalization that all US military spending is used for simply "killing people".

Well, that is what military does - it either kills people it or looms above people as existential threat and humiliation - but usually, and presently, a whole lot of both. In no way does it not reduce the value of life. But the point was that innumerable times the taxmoney that is spent on Americans (apart from stowing them in private jails for some decades for buying a gram of weed under coercion from a undercover cop for some years to cost the taxpayer thrice every year what a college education costs, a practice that has been legitimized as a valid market, including the entrapment to get the customers/product in) is spent on killing or reducing non-Americans.

Such markets are possible only at gunpoint. The US is well known abroad for typically conducting business like this, but no one has ever understood why. It speaks of huge insecurities and misunderstanding of culture. And indeed it is all entirely ungrounded in the reality of Growth; it has been operating this aggressive bully-business entirely against its economical interest; namely with companies that aren't US- but Cayman-  based... this is globalism, taxing the population to buy weapons, then using these weapons to coerce nations with resources into unprofitable deals, and paying no taxes, and inserting only insignificant parts of the profits back into the economy, often set up to gain from the collapse of legitimate, US based, tax paying  companies that try to compete.

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Again, the US maintains active military presence in and around over hundred countries precisely because existential-globalized capitalism requires this.

But this is the deification of the monopoly of violence, the deification the State.

I would have a more fluid, spontanously meritable functionality arise. Why would it be necessary to militarily coerce nations to do what they already want to do? Note that US globocapitalism has created radical Islam and destroyed virtually all markets there except the arm and oil markets, where it was a notably diversified trade region, in fact the hub of the Eurasian continental trade.

Ill need to see an argument before I believe there is anything to this but robbery and tyranny.

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If the US stops doing it then someone else would need to step in (not likely), or economic relations would fall apart into military ones. I wrote somewhere else here about how nations can trade with each other only when military force is not actualized; I would add that the presence of a potential military force is also just as important.

That is really a heavy handed idea about Trade, and not one I could easily be swayed into upholding. I would not buy stuff or sell stuff to you at gunpoint....  it disables trust in the primacy of valuing, and Capitalizes Might is Right as a rule. I'd say it is the opposite of good conditions for trade, is it bases on the presumption that the parties arent voluntarily engaging in an exchange, whereas voluntary exchange is literally the only method that Being has to conduct itself.

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This is "metaphysical" in the following way: individual people can only meaningfully relate to each other when there is an absence of overt violence. This is the idea of peace, not for its own sake but because at any scope or milieu (family, friend, work, national, etc) you need non-violence-based framework for truly human exchanges of meaning to take place. A father who instigated violence in his household is destroying the possibility for truly meaningfully exchanges to take place, for example; a huge international economy of trade among nations is possibly only because open warfare isn't taking place. In this way the US military violences in the ME are definitely stifling that place, preventing true economic conditions from appearing, which may be part of the goal since all we really want from there is oil and to sell them arms.

A heavy beatdown of a young child isn't conductive of anything, nor is the presence of a very foreign power who heavily out-arms you sat your borders required for a peaceful trade deal. Trust  (in self-valuing, reality, and humanity) rather than humiliation is conductive.

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Another example: the economic divide between state and private sector in capitalism is analogous to the ontological divide between the society and the individual: society and individual cannot be reduced to each other, as terms they are both mutually dependent upon one another as well as eternally apart from one another. This situation can be dismissed by claiming as some do that "societies" do not really exist, that all that exists are individuals, but that is a very unphilosophical way of looking at it. When we look at capital-ism expanding today outwardly and inwardly, building itself in an existential sense, I see this divide between the state and the private business or private individual as a direct manifestation of the mutually dependency plus mutual irreducibility between the fundamental categories of society and individual. This duality exists for a reason, and neither category is "good or bad" in an absolute way, both are absolutely necessary.

I see State and Society as separate paradigms. They can coincide, but in most nations nowadays do not, and in the US, they are now also almost entirely separated.

Society is easily destroyed by an overbearing state.

Society is about people as equals, State requires that some people are arbitrarily elevated above others.

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Trump as I said is a Christ-figure who represents the metaphysical principle of Capital-ism (existential capitalism) as a pure Sign of this principle enacted materially in the "real" human world today, politically speaking. Since politics is the literal mediating between truth qua "socioeconomy" and "real earthy" human being it makes perfect sense that this Sign appeared where it did, in politics. Before I said that what Trump represents is a threat to the existentia, but this is really just a threat because of how imposing necessary changes to the given political apparatus making it more in line with evolving capitalism. This is Hegelian: Trump is joyful capital excess, but he wants to attack and undermine certain segments of US and global capitalist society-- why? Precisely to refine them, to shake it a bit so that structures settle in slightly new and more stable ways. Trump attacks the very thing he really loves because he sees impediments to this thing he loves, "the government", "other countries", "taxes", "non-capitalists (liberals)", for example are all categories meant to identify things that in their present forms are impeding the natural existentializing of capitalism. For example, reducing US military interventions and releasing pressure with Russia would expand inter-national capitalist opportunities across those spaces; other issues like simplifying the tax code are more ideologically-driven but logically whatever Trump proposes or would want to do must somehow stem from the fact that he a "vision of the future" of continually liberated Capital. Decreasing the relative power of the state is one way of further liberating Capital, since it is always a back and forth dance between the two primary poles of state and private (social and individual) controls. Right now the state level is bloated and ineffectual, so knocking it down a little will only force it to collapse around a more stable and efficient center, inevitably increasing its power. This is how it works for both state and private, social and individual: attacks only make these things stronger, force more necessity of reality upon them, so new excessive powers and joyful contingencies can spring up and the "war" between these two categories can continue. But remember, these polar categorical forms are not the fundamental truth here, the fundamental truth is the "metaphysical" primacy of what is called Capital-ism, liberated capital itself, which is a kind of stand-in for truth and for truth's power.

I clearly agree with all these advantages of relinquishing some control but I also clearly disagree with the categorization of state and individual, at least if, as it is to me the human is the be central issue rather than the state, or both. Given that my ontological understanding is monadological, it is either-or, we begin with a specific self-valuing scale and type, namely the only one we could possibly understand our own - and from there we build further. The recognition embracing of ones own SV type is already a thinking-building.

It is for me as simple as holding fast to self-valuing logic, and not allowing axioms (institutions, in this case) that arent directly derived from it. If Society is directly derived from it it can not be used dialectically as its opposite. Every step of the process would fractalize the process and create an infinity of new fantom operators. Which it does - that is bureaucracy intertwined with special interest groups. I see it as dead weight.

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Clinton is stagnant administration of nihilistic apathy, an entropic tendency within the "lower" of the capitalistic order, while Trump is fresh vital dynamism and excess-love; but both of them serve existential capitalism.

If Capitalism is to  become existential, I say that it has to be rid of military coercion, and assume that all nations understand the merits of trade. That would mean a first stage of enlightening the world to valuing.


Practical:

The existential level of pre-emtive show of force is always implied between nations or large enough factions that show up to a deal, and entirely unnecessary to evoke as a direct apparition at the scene of the trade. This tells the trade partner 2 things. 1: I need to show that I don't trust you - you are an enemy. 2: you are stupid, as I needed to bring my force to show you I have it.

Asiatic trade deals have traditionally rather been accompanied by the most refined of politesses and diplomatic arts. As soon as the Americans learn to bring some tea instead of trillion dollar death-apparatuses to their meet with the Chinese for a mutually beneficial operation, the world will be fine.

The only reason for this military weight is that it is a business that has traditionally profited from causing and perpetuating human crisis. The arms industry now rules whatever Capitalism used to mean, because it can. It is the arms industry. It is pure existential logic. Only a developing of the same logic, of power into value, will resolve this, and this is to be done as I have always figured it - ; relinquish mistrust, and create or discover trust. In other words, natural capitalism is created in the understanding that the other is also a self-valuing. The USA is the first capitalist nation that does not understand this - or that has decided that it is not the case somewhere in the past century. The EU is like the soul of this anti-ontic Statist US superimposed on Europe. Bot institutions must and will relinquish their totalitarian, top down ambitions to press mankind into a single qualium. Trump represents a return to self-valuing, to real decision making - but of course indeed this does in no way remove the apparatus as it stands.

He will make tremendous inroads and gains and alleviate much debt if he continues trading as he does now, when he is president; humanly.

Most amazing is how Trump's faults make him stronger. This is more than just "we want a strongman daddy figure" as the media is saying about his supporters. The faults simply remind people of the real reasons why they like him, its as if he were being criticized for being an unfashionable dresser or having weirdly colored socks or for liking an unusual food, these criticisms of whatever he says are basically on that level.

We agree on trade and on use of force, my point was that the possibility of force is superior to the use of force. Free voluntary trade and trust is indeed the basis of being-interaction but its also "speak softly but carry a big stick", there must be the potential of force in the background to regulate free economic interactions at large scales of capital, simply because the cost-benefit increases toward benefit for criminals and thieves around such transactions. And rather than each individual person arming themselves we have financial laws and courts, police and jails, and internationally we have treaties and trade deals and ultimately diplomatic and military threats of potential force-use. Some philosopher pointed out that when the government resorts to using force it undermines itself compared to holding that force in reserve in the background. Yeah I think that was Zizek talking about violence and using the example of China in Tienemen Square, how after that occurred China rewrote the account and erased the happening of the event, not because of some historical revisionism but because the official use of force actually undermines, by making tangible and concrete in reality and thus subject to limitation, an otherwise limitless abstract potential use of force.

Anyway, I just want some kind of framework of laws and enforcement against crime and fraud, nations themselves have those frameworks but I want it also between nations-- why? Because the absence of such a framework is the reason why international economics is an imperial matter of monopolized "evil" businesses raping smaller businesses and raping the people of other nations. There is no legal or police enforcement to appeal to when another nation and its people and businesses get fucked over in international economic affairs, in fact I am quite surprised that real military violence doesn't erupt more already; the US acts as a kind of background deterrent with its military, the obvious problem with that is that this deterrent isn't a deterrent against US crimes and frauds, it doesn't self-police itself and even the US military is used to support US questionably business transactions that rip off other nations. Hence you see why I want a more international framework of law against fraud and theft and an enforcement mechanism that is truly super-national so that no single nation can use that mechanism for its singular benefit, as the US now does. It is self-valuing logic that the US would do this hypocritical double standard with its military deterrent factor, in not blaming the US although it does speak to a very low character... but really I see the need for a super-national legal and enforcement system in international economic affairs. Trump wants to stop using the US military as the enforcement and deterrent arm of global capital, that's fine but unless another mechanism of deterrence and background potential use of force is established we're going to see international economic relations degenerate toward anarchy and true Might makes Right at the regional level; every second world nation will enforce its military power upon third world nations to secure advantageous economic deals while every first world nation will do that to every second world nation, and nations at the same level will compete like this too. I despise anarchy and I want to reign in US military global capital enforcement-deterrence only because I want a better, more international body and system to take over the same role.

Even in the classical laissez faire capitalism it is absolutely necessary to have legal and police systems in place to prevent theft and fraud, so an equal playing field can become possible.

It seems that we have come to an agreement, that the most natural global arbiter and balance of power would be formed by a Russian-American tension-alliance. A kind of positive, ontic tension that produces the outlines of a world.

The Cold War evidently did already represent this tension, but it was still charged with ideology, and an expansionist Russia. Russia has been restored to being simply a nation, and this is what the US is returning to now as well. The US has won the cold war indisputably, and if it now consolidates what it has, and cuts its losses (ideally including the entire traditional media apparatus, in which journalism as well as national- a well as human interest have become extinct) then it will still be 'first among equals' as every nation has already accepted it, and no one will ever fuck with it. It is only their absolute blundering in Vietnam and the Middle East that had nations grow contemptuous of the US. It is clear to me that only Russia is cut out to regulate Asia, and the US should now become more concerned with getting Mexico in order again and creating a vastly wealthy and prosperous American Continent.

All this Trump stuff has made me realize an important truth: we need to undermine the reactive base of emotions. My own emotional reactivity and spontaneous response was clouding my judgment here. I have reason to dislike Trump politically speaking, but that was never the point. I do hope he wins, I've decided that I will probably vote for him (meaning that if I bother to actually go vote, I would vote for him). But my point is that emotions are a poison in so far as they remain "naturally reactive". Yeah we should be able to have natural reactive, responsive and spontaneous emotions but that's assuming we live in a near perfect environment, which im guessing most of us do not. The human world is fucked up. We need a philosophical distance from things to be able to judge them accurately.

The irony is that we only gain the ability to be happy and to have real emotions when we destroy the reactive base of those same emotions. At first I resisted this insight because I thought the insight was, "we neee to destroy the reactive emotions". I didn't want to destroy my emotions so I resisted that. Now I realize it isn't emotions that need to be destroyed but only their reactive spontaneous character.

Maybe someday humans will live in a world where spontaneous natural reactive emotions don't immediately equate to thrusting oneself into hell. Until then I'll rely on philosophy to liberate the truly active base in the emotions, freeing them to be participatory in, if not a more meaningful reality per se, then at least in a more stable and sanely meaningful reality.