A malevolent person outside of your reach? What does that mean?
Even if they live in the same country as you, even if you see their face every day, you cannot do anything to them, AND the harm they do to others. And thus, out of your reach and outside of your control. They are not like criminals or anyone else who can be persecuted by the justice system. Because of their wealth, power, and influence, they might as well BE the justice system. And it’s not like they usurped positions of power like some foreign invader. No, people choose them and, despite seeing who they are, WILL CHOOSE THEM AGAIN.
People usually say to ignore things outside of your control. But what about the fact that YOU are in THEIR control and will never be mutual, nor the other way around? What about the fact that they knowingly harm YOU and others by actively making decisions that elevate their established financial supporters while simultaneously bringing down everyone else?
The ones who voted for them? The ones who actually elevated them to that position? They see them as cattle to be easily manipulated because, unfortunately, most people decide based on feelings, no matter what political group they are in. And feelings are easily manipulated.
Religions will say that there will be divine retribution to punish people like them. But let’s stick to the real world without Christ, Allah, Yahweh, Gods, or Magick.
These people have been around for centuries; they’re not a new phenomenon. And the revolutions that bring down tyrants just end up propping another tyrant. Is apathy the only way to deal with this?
Should we learn to love the cage we’re in? Or at least learn not to care about the cage?
I have also recently felt trapped in the asylum with the inmates. I deal with it like I deal with everything else … it is just what’s in front of me to cope with. That’s all anyone can do.
Of course it wasn’t always this bad, and eventually won’t be so bad again. That’s the ebb and flow of life.
Gods or no gods, life is an inexorable steamroller that’s going to plod along its course no matter how much you disapprove. Rather than scream and wave at it and let it run me over, I prefer to hop on for the ride. The view is better, anyway.
“Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies”…not sure who said it…but it applies here.
Through the thin veil I can guess who you’re talking about. Honestly, it wouldn’t keep me awake at night if he started running with scissors…
Boenhoffer would attribute it to stupidity. To clarify, per Leo: “Dietrich Bonhoeffer described stupidity not as an intellectual deficiency, but as a moral and psychological failure—a surrender of inner independence to groupthink, ideology, or authority.“
So, don’t surrender your critical thinking, keep your head down and wait for the mob to turn on them.
In the case of the Orange One, I think there’s a fair bit of stupidity as well. His mind is sophisticated only in the quick, intuitive and skillful manipulation of the worst instincts of others, and part of that skill is being completely devoid of empathy, self-awareness (and therefore shame) in doing so.
I think Boenhoffer was contemplating typical / ordinary “surrender of inner independence”, but the people at the top of this regime – perhaps people like Vought and Miller even more than Trump – are more degenerate still than that. I think mostly they don’t believe the ideology they are promoting; it is merely a means to an end, and that end is death and destruction for its own sake. They are burning our house down with us in it, and that is as far as they think, because they are so cut off from their humanity and the humanity of others that they cannot see that they too, will burn in the end.
I admit, in 2015 I saw the Orange Jesus as the comic relief in the election cycle. I couldn’t believe that someone who displayed such a fast and easy way with the truth could…and eventually would prevail.
It’s now been 10 years of Orange Purgatory. One side sees him as a protector and the other sees him as the Anti-Christ. He has used that division to his own benefit. But he’s not the first. The last 100 years has brought the world Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Perón and Chávez…all leaders originally elected, then turned authoritarian. The world has survived. The world will survive the Gran Jesús Naranja as well.
Two books come to mind for explaining how we got here:
1.) The Culture of Narcissism - Christopher Lasch
2.) The Fate of Empires (essay) or The Fate of Empires and the Search for Survival (book) - Sir John Glubb
Glubb’s essay is available online at the Internet Archive. Pay particular attention to Stage 6: Age of Decadence: Moral decline, loss of national unity, and eventual collapse.
In the States, I think you could argue that Newt Gingrich was the historical marker for moving the US into Stage 6.
For some given value of “survive” and “pass”, yes. Authoritarian regimes are never sustainable. The open question is how much human suffering they will cause before they inevitably collapse, and in what ways that trauma will lodge unresolved in the psyche of people and re-manifest later in subsequence generations, with the tendency to reproduce itself down the line.
A big part of that question, IMO, is how much justice we will see for the perpetrators of all this. If society has devolved enough to be unable to hold these degenerates accountable for their perfidies, then there is no closure at all for the victims. That applies to the people now languishing in torture prisons, lost to their families and to all hope; to the victims of Epstein’s trafficking with Trump’s complicity; to the people going hungry right now because of these policies, and probably a thousand outrages we don’t even know about. Collectively they cry out for justice: will we give it? It’s not a certainty.
There is also of course a place for reconciliation and healing but it cannot fully come without justice. Nuremberg and all the Nazi hunters weren’t perfect but they helped us to move on from WW2. We will need similar help moving on from … whatever this is, even if it ends before devolving into WW3. If we don’t, we are only constructing an historical parenthesis between two reactionary fascist regimes.
Until the US returns to something resembling impartial justice and the rule of law nothing changes. Until some moral imperative returns to the electorate it will likely continue the downward spiral.
The Democratic party is not going to save anyone. They can’t even save themselves. The Republican party is still wrestling with what life will be like post Trump. The citizens are on their own with this one.
I would argue this situation is completely self-inflicted. It seems obvious that the majority of Americans were not the least bit concerned about preserving institutions or American democracy. Their concerns were much more self-centered. Unity was sacrificed for grievance. No one seems to be united for a common good, they just form tribes over shared hatred or grievance.
Per George Weigal, in an article titled “Against the Politics of Grievance,” published on March 26, 2025, “It’s not that grievances aren’t real. Some are, and there is a moral obligation to address and remedy them. But grievance politics inevitably leads to the dissolution of political communities—or, just as insidiously, makes political community difficult, if not impossible, to form.”
I think the next couple of years will tell how this shakes out. We’re only a year away from the mid-terms, which historically never go well for the party in the White House. If it turns into a shellacking then Trump is essentially a lame duck President with the likelihood of his final 2 years smothered in Congressional investigations. Much of his agenda sinks into the mud at that point. Strange how 2 years of political stagnation seems preferable to the current state of affairs…
With Watergate draped over him, Nixon cost the republicans 12 Senate seats and 48 House seats in the 1974 midterms. I’m curious to see what happens when the rest of the organized Republican party realizes they just fell on someone else’s sword. Considering Trump is the anti-mentor it is possible a result like this could make a formal impeachment a likelihood. One can only hope…
Honestly, I’m less afraid of Trump and the Republicans than I am the American public. They will still be here, with all of their issues, long after Trump fades into curtains…
I completely agree with this take. Grievances and tribalism are the order of the day. Most of our fellow citizens are ignorant about anything relating to civics and how the system was supposed to work and why, and what their role in it is / should be. I understand that https://runforsomething.net/ is meeting with considerable success in getting fresh blood into the system, finally playing the same long game that the GOP has pursued for a generation – you start at dog catcher, city council, school board, not at the top. Mamdani in particular has produced a surge of interest in public service in young people.
But it’s a big job, into considerable headwinds, and the problem isn’t just confined to the US. Things are getting wobbly everywhere as people fight for dwindling resources.
As you say, the next couple of years will tell us the general trajectory.
How would I deal with the fact that there is no justice? It wouldn’t change anything; I knew there was no justice in this world long before I could read or write. It’s rather obvious imo.
My position is that God (the sum of being) exists and that God is omnipresent (within all being). As God is omnipresent, you are part of God. If you wish to live out your limited live on this Earth with utility, you could seek divinity in accordance to cooperation, integration, and harmony, or you could be mindful of the lack of Godhood that you possess and seek to do better or worse. You can then either practice cooperation, integration, and harmony to make reality a better, more aware, and happier version, or you can either practice negation, discord, and disharmony. You can also choose to be thankful and do your best with what you have, or be spiteful because reality does not answer to your limited power in the way that you want. Which will you choose?
A third option: face the factors of life as they are without a mind filled with thousands of years of standard concepts and beliefs garnering the horror and confusion of a wasted life.
I, too, am therefore interested in evidence for your claim.
Sheldon *sigh* there is a semantic subjective value judgment of the term “God” in the way of our discussion. We don’t define the term “God” after the same manner. You’re assuming a classical theist model (which you argue that there is not), whereas I’m assuming a process-relational panentheistic model. Since we’re not talking about the same things, I don’t see the benefit of continuing conversation unless we can come to a mutual definition which we can discuss on whether it exists or not.
It should be noted that the capitalised form “God” is quite specific in its definitions, and none match your proposed usage. Perhaps, for your alternative system, you should use the ‘god” version or coin your own term without prejudicial loading.
Then perhaps you can argue your case without confusion and allow the rest of us to enjoy our popcorn.
I understand what panentheism is, but unlike pantheism it posits a deity that is still in a sense separate / transcendent from / greater than the universe. To me (and, I suspect, to Sheldon and most of us here) that is a rather minor detail and no more evidenced or evidenceable than the Abrahamic or any other deity.
Pantheism is a somewhat different beast in that it equates god with the universe but that just strikes me as unhelpfully confusing semantics. Mankind tends to conflate vast size and/or age and the attendant sense of awe with some combination of mystery and/or agency that I don’t see as warranted. We have perfectly good, descriptive and accepted words for “universe” and “existence” and so god or even some vaguer divine principle isn’t required to understand it, nor helpful in doing so. In fact it is quite the opposite.
At any rate – I don’t see where accepting a panentheist view of the divine is fundamentally different or invalidates Sheldon’s objections. It is still asserted and unevidenced and, though not quite as unable to BE evidenced as the supernatural types of gods that lose their supposedly inhernent supernatural qualities the minute then have contact with the natural, still – I don’t know how you would evidence, much less prove, that such a being exists or is possible (or necessary to explain anything).
I appreciate your response, but unfortunately, I must resort to such. The term “god” carries other associations which would not be helpful to this conversation. Coining my own term wouldn’t be in fidelity to what I believe the term “God” represents either.
