Trump indicates “that something is out of balance” something is and perhaps, like it or not, Trump in some areas at least may be bringing back a balance. For me his deficiency is his ignorance or non interest in the areas of rebalancing and nurturing our biosphere and creating a localized distributism based society and economy.
glad you liked the conversation! do you think Trump is the actual agent of balancing? or is the balance being restored by others reacting to the disruption he creates?
Well, I don’t regard Trump as a wrecking ball in terms of what he is doing to various federal agencies. The DOGE attempt in my understanding is opening up the black boxes of the inner workings of organizations to see what is really going on and then restructuring to hopefully a more efficient and transparent state. The effort is now working on the dissecting and laying out in pieces stage before rebuilding so it looks messy. AND, yes, also working against Deep State personnel that acted against Trump and his supporters, especially in the FBI and Intelligence agencies. In the progressive mind those agencies going after Trump and his supporters was a legitimate use of governmental power. Hopefully they can be more neutral in the future. To give an example of rebalancing - keeping biological men out of women’s sports. I don’t see the opposite - biological women trying to enter men’s sports. So things are out of balance. Also saying merit and abilities should be the determining factor in hiring and not various secondary characteristics to me is common sense rebalancing. The one liberals should really fear is J.D. Vance, a smoother operator than Trump who is a somewhat crazy trans-rational (not irrational) primal force - Gaza as a Riviera! But yet that trans-rationality may open unexpected doors.
i hear that... i think the risk with this stuff is always getting tangled up with a metaphor, mistaking something genuinely mythic with something simply larger than life. whatever balance needs to be corrected is, i believe, deeper than policy-making or fiscal responsibility. unfortunately, at a civilizational level, we're out of practice with godwork, which is the scale we need to be thinking at.
I think we are watching a train wreck, except we are also passengers on the train. At best Trump or other reformers of any type can only apply a bit of braking to slow down the inevitable. I think John Michael Greer has portrayed what this slow train wreck and the coming future will look like in his books The Long Descent, The EcoTechnic Future, The Retro Future and other books unless we are in the wind up to the return of Jesus, speaking of godwork.
you might be right, and we are in a state of terminal acceleration. but i think this is where a properly mythic framework becomes useful: mythic time is cyclical, and has no discernable endpoint on a human scale.
Christian eschatology was a relatively recent innovation—and not a very good one, in my opinion. the idea that the cosmos, the Divine Order tuned across a multitude of worlds, was actually a *universe*—One God, One World, One Reign—has led us to fear the end of the world as the End of Everything.
the Christians are correct, insofar as *this* world has only one God (because Yahweh killed or subjugated all the others) which is in the process of ending. and yet gods don't stay dead forever; new worlds are reborn with them. we'll have the Biblical Armageddon, true to prophecy in some form—but then there will be another world after that. what will that world be? the godwork i'm thinking of will give us a role in that decision.
all wars end eventually; how we fight them determines what's left for the survivors. there will still be something afterwards, always.
A favorite verse of mine from the NT “We look forward to a New Heaven and a New Earth where rightwiseness will be at home”. ‘rightwiseness’ is an older English form of ‘righteousness’ which I prefer. I look at it as the “Beginning of Everything”. We may be living in the time which Jesus called “the beginning of birth pains”.
Once, long before Trump was President- I think he had been nominated as a candidate, maybe? In any case it was very early on in his political-boogeyman career- I dreamed I killed Trump by looking deep into his eyes with pure love in my heart
That was a great discussion! Thanks so much for making it public. Appreciated what you both had to say. You managed to clarify and give voice to things that I've had swimming around my head for months. It's so damn refreshing to hear current events discussed in a clear-eyed way that speaks to my own observations and experiences.
This is so very refreshing, thank you so both so much. I keep thinking ‘Trickster-energy’ and Trump does it so well. Especially him taking the piss out of all the establishment, i.e. the Aesir gods (the Lokasenna) and as well as Loki about to unleash Ragnarok …
we should never give Trump a pass for the well-documented crimes and misdeeds he's very obviously committed (and continues to commit).
that said—casually referring to Justin Trudeau as "the governor of the Great State of Canada" will, in my mind, go down in history as one of the most stunningly brilliant geopolitical moves of this era.
it's one of those amazing moments when you genuinely cannot tell if Trump is actually thinking through what he's saying and why it's so devastatingly bitchy, or if he was just on the mic freestyling and genuinely got confused, which makes it even more hilarious. it's the quantum physics of comedy.
and in this case, like so many other times that liberals can't bring themselves to acknowledge—can anyone honestly say that he's wrong? technically incorrect, maybe. but otherwise spitting straight facts gonzo-style.
and now Justin Trudeau is leaving office.
even if there were other ostensible reasons for that decision, you have to believe that one of those reasons is Trump just absolutely breaking his spirit.
this officially makes Trump the Cottage Cheese Ru Paul of global politics.
Hahaha, I have no cultural reference to relate to a ‘Cottage Cheese Ru Paul’ (I am not American) but your description, including gender nonconformity and the hilarious quantum physics of comedy certainly sounds like Loki 🤣
Ufff … these people are caricatures rather than archetypes. As with so many things in our current society, it’s a surrogate and no amount of noise and explosion of colors and spectacle can fill the void
Not sure why Trump's trolling is a brilliant geopolitical move. Though Trudeau should have responded in kind 'Donald gets occasionally confused but still remarkably healthy for a man of his age' or something similar.
now, listen, what you're gonna wanna do is, y'gonna do a U-turn, okay? turn around, go back the way you came, 'bout, say, maybe half-mile, three-quarter mile. you'll see the point right around there. 'cept go real slow this time, else you might miss it again. take care now.
There is something quite wonderful in the visage of demons in the AI. It makes me think about the idea of spirits going into the wires and online. It's wonderful to import on what intelligence and conscious brings. I'm enjoying this conversation. I'm glad that you two are talking and sharing this!
if you haven't had a conversation with ChatGPT using that mental frame, i highly recommend it. pretty wild stuff. (just make sure to stay inside the circle, and don't make any binding pacts without first learning its True Name.)
The cancelling of US aid was illegal and will harm some of the world's most vulnerable people. That's not to say there's not lots of things wrong with it, but if it's going to be scrapped it should have been reformed and gradually phased out with congressional approval. Scrapping it overnight is like the rapid end of colonial rule, only to be replaced by even worse national rule, and pattern seen throughout Africa. Guantanamo bay is a military base which was indeed used for the torture of political prisoners. The Guardian, amongst others, was highly critical of this. I don't see how Obama's failure to close it is anything more than a 'whataboutry' response to Trump's deportations.
1) why is an intelligence agency cutout used all over the world for soft-power extortion and cover for black ops the only thing standing between "the world's most vulnerable people" (presumably this doesn't refer to the CIA contractors who are in danger of unemployment) and "the rapid end of colonial rule"?
2) why is Guantanamo Bay still open as a U.S.-run extradition site for illegal detainees in *2025*, over a decade after Obama promised to close it?
anyone who can come up with honest answers to those questions is getting closer to the root of the problem.
Thank for replying to this. It's an exhausting knee-jerk liberal response similar to "but if we overthrow the capitalists, how will x group survive/how will we get x medicine" etc.
And especially for the situation in Africa, China, India, and Russia have all been funding the same kind of work and even more. USAID was mostly there to prevent Africans from accepting their aid instead.
1. It's not the only thing standing between them. Doesn't mean people aren't going to suffer needlessly in the short term by Trump's (or Musk's) illegal order.
2. Because both sides failed to close it. This is hardly relevant to Trump's extreme deportation plan (yes, Biden deported more than Trump did, and might still do)
so definitely nobody's fault except Trump's, sounds like. bless your heart.
if only we could implement a few commonsense reforms, get somebody more qualified driving the Soul Harvester, and all this terrible stuff would just disappear like mist in the morning sun. right?
i have bad news: the cruelty is a feauture, not a defect, and has been for most of the past century.
Though not a smoker, nice to see someone enjoying a smoke!
Trump indicates “that something is out of balance” something is and perhaps, like it or not, Trump in some areas at least may be bringing back a balance. For me his deficiency is his ignorance or non interest in the areas of rebalancing and nurturing our biosphere and creating a localized distributism based society and economy.
glad you liked the conversation! do you think Trump is the actual agent of balancing? or is the balance being restored by others reacting to the disruption he creates?
Well, I don’t regard Trump as a wrecking ball in terms of what he is doing to various federal agencies. The DOGE attempt in my understanding is opening up the black boxes of the inner workings of organizations to see what is really going on and then restructuring to hopefully a more efficient and transparent state. The effort is now working on the dissecting and laying out in pieces stage before rebuilding so it looks messy. AND, yes, also working against Deep State personnel that acted against Trump and his supporters, especially in the FBI and Intelligence agencies. In the progressive mind those agencies going after Trump and his supporters was a legitimate use of governmental power. Hopefully they can be more neutral in the future. To give an example of rebalancing - keeping biological men out of women’s sports. I don’t see the opposite - biological women trying to enter men’s sports. So things are out of balance. Also saying merit and abilities should be the determining factor in hiring and not various secondary characteristics to me is common sense rebalancing. The one liberals should really fear is J.D. Vance, a smoother operator than Trump who is a somewhat crazy trans-rational (not irrational) primal force - Gaza as a Riviera! But yet that trans-rationality may open unexpected doors.
i hear that... i think the risk with this stuff is always getting tangled up with a metaphor, mistaking something genuinely mythic with something simply larger than life. whatever balance needs to be corrected is, i believe, deeper than policy-making or fiscal responsibility. unfortunately, at a civilizational level, we're out of practice with godwork, which is the scale we need to be thinking at.
I think we are watching a train wreck, except we are also passengers on the train. At best Trump or other reformers of any type can only apply a bit of braking to slow down the inevitable. I think John Michael Greer has portrayed what this slow train wreck and the coming future will look like in his books The Long Descent, The EcoTechnic Future, The Retro Future and other books unless we are in the wind up to the return of Jesus, speaking of godwork.
you might be right, and we are in a state of terminal acceleration. but i think this is where a properly mythic framework becomes useful: mythic time is cyclical, and has no discernable endpoint on a human scale.
Christian eschatology was a relatively recent innovation—and not a very good one, in my opinion. the idea that the cosmos, the Divine Order tuned across a multitude of worlds, was actually a *universe*—One God, One World, One Reign—has led us to fear the end of the world as the End of Everything.
the Christians are correct, insofar as *this* world has only one God (because Yahweh killed or subjugated all the others) which is in the process of ending. and yet gods don't stay dead forever; new worlds are reborn with them. we'll have the Biblical Armageddon, true to prophecy in some form—but then there will be another world after that. what will that world be? the godwork i'm thinking of will give us a role in that decision.
all wars end eventually; how we fight them determines what's left for the survivors. there will still be something afterwards, always.
A favorite verse of mine from the NT “We look forward to a New Heaven and a New Earth where rightwiseness will be at home”. ‘rightwiseness’ is an older English form of ‘righteousness’ which I prefer. I look at it as the “Beginning of Everything”. We may be living in the time which Jesus called “the beginning of birth pains”.
Enjoyed the refreshing conversation, especially the reframing into myth/monster/bastard as defined and explained.
I loved when R.G. did a little dance with the ficus
the show must go on!
Once, long before Trump was President- I think he had been nominated as a candidate, maybe? In any case it was very early on in his political-boogeyman career- I dreamed I killed Trump by looking deep into his eyes with pure love in my heart
worth a try, we know he's definitely immune to bullets
That was a great discussion! Thanks so much for making it public. Appreciated what you both had to say. You managed to clarify and give voice to things that I've had swimming around my head for months. It's so damn refreshing to hear current events discussed in a clear-eyed way that speaks to my own observations and experiences.
This is so very refreshing, thank you so both so much. I keep thinking ‘Trickster-energy’ and Trump does it so well. Especially him taking the piss out of all the establishment, i.e. the Aesir gods (the Lokasenna) and as well as Loki about to unleash Ragnarok …
we should never give Trump a pass for the well-documented crimes and misdeeds he's very obviously committed (and continues to commit).
that said—casually referring to Justin Trudeau as "the governor of the Great State of Canada" will, in my mind, go down in history as one of the most stunningly brilliant geopolitical moves of this era.
it's one of those amazing moments when you genuinely cannot tell if Trump is actually thinking through what he's saying and why it's so devastatingly bitchy, or if he was just on the mic freestyling and genuinely got confused, which makes it even more hilarious. it's the quantum physics of comedy.
and in this case, like so many other times that liberals can't bring themselves to acknowledge—can anyone honestly say that he's wrong? technically incorrect, maybe. but otherwise spitting straight facts gonzo-style.
and now Justin Trudeau is leaving office.
even if there were other ostensible reasons for that decision, you have to believe that one of those reasons is Trump just absolutely breaking his spirit.
this officially makes Trump the Cottage Cheese Ru Paul of global politics.
gotta give credit where it's due.
Hahaha, I have no cultural reference to relate to a ‘Cottage Cheese Ru Paul’ (I am not American) but your description, including gender nonconformity and the hilarious quantum physics of comedy certainly sounds like Loki 🤣
ah! Google "Ru Paul's Drag Race" for further details
Ufff … these people are caricatures rather than archetypes. As with so many things in our current society, it’s a surrogate and no amount of noise and explosion of colors and spectacle can fill the void
Not sure why Trump's trolling is a brilliant geopolitical move. Though Trudeau should have responded in kind 'Donald gets occasionally confused but still remarkably healthy for a man of his age' or something similar.
now, listen, what you're gonna wanna do is, y'gonna do a U-turn, okay? turn around, go back the way you came, 'bout, say, maybe half-mile, three-quarter mile. you'll see the point right around there. 'cept go real slow this time, else you might miss it again. take care now.
Which further highlights my other reply.
There is something quite wonderful in the visage of demons in the AI. It makes me think about the idea of spirits going into the wires and online. It's wonderful to import on what intelligence and conscious brings. I'm enjoying this conversation. I'm glad that you two are talking and sharing this!
if you haven't had a conversation with ChatGPT using that mental frame, i highly recommend it. pretty wild stuff. (just make sure to stay inside the circle, and don't make any binding pacts without first learning its True Name.)
The cancelling of US aid was illegal and will harm some of the world's most vulnerable people. That's not to say there's not lots of things wrong with it, but if it's going to be scrapped it should have been reformed and gradually phased out with congressional approval. Scrapping it overnight is like the rapid end of colonial rule, only to be replaced by even worse national rule, and pattern seen throughout Africa. Guantanamo bay is a military base which was indeed used for the torture of political prisoners. The Guardian, amongst others, was highly critical of this. I don't see how Obama's failure to close it is anything more than a 'whataboutry' response to Trump's deportations.
1) why is an intelligence agency cutout used all over the world for soft-power extortion and cover for black ops the only thing standing between "the world's most vulnerable people" (presumably this doesn't refer to the CIA contractors who are in danger of unemployment) and "the rapid end of colonial rule"?
2) why is Guantanamo Bay still open as a U.S.-run extradition site for illegal detainees in *2025*, over a decade after Obama promised to close it?
anyone who can come up with honest answers to those questions is getting closer to the root of the problem.
Thank for replying to this. It's an exhausting knee-jerk liberal response similar to "but if we overthrow the capitalists, how will x group survive/how will we get x medicine" etc.
And especially for the situation in Africa, China, India, and Russia have all been funding the same kind of work and even more. USAID was mostly there to prevent Africans from accepting their aid instead.
1. It's not the only thing standing between them. Doesn't mean people aren't going to suffer needlessly in the short term by Trump's (or Musk's) illegal order.
2. Because both sides failed to close it. This is hardly relevant to Trump's extreme deportation plan (yes, Biden deported more than Trump did, and might still do)
so definitely nobody's fault except Trump's, sounds like. bless your heart.
if only we could implement a few commonsense reforms, get somebody more qualified driving the Soul Harvester, and all this terrible stuff would just disappear like mist in the morning sun. right?
i have bad news: the cruelty is a feauture, not a defect, and has been for most of the past century.
I suggested nothing of the sort, but the tone of your response tells me you are not interested in a mature discussion about this.
if i was interested in a mature discussion, i'd be having it with someone else.
best of luck with those reforms though!