- my suggesting a small sign of hope -- on no 'Sophist' track at all. I'm underwhelmed that thou displayeth a merely pedestrian level of understanding of Scale, much as do the nameless Yahoos of every era.

ID and its clones - is about a Political war constructed to leverage The Base.. once-and-for-All >| against those provisions in the US Constitution as fully-enough recognized the tendency for True Believers to machine-gun other True Believers (displaying an iota of Different-'belief'.)

Fragile as was that 'wall of separation', (I suppose.. that) the Founding Mothers were well-enough aware: no 'word wall'could ever be impervious to such techniques as [to save space, say] just lump a lot of techniques; call it language murder.
[Franklin clearly grokked the precariousness to fullness. Alas, so is his prediction coming true - re the Republic's longevity and Why it would fail]

Now.. perhaps I have misunderestimated the philosophical depth of my fellow Muricans, consistently, over a handful of decades -?- BUT - I submit that the %pop who could ID 'Pascal' would be somewhat larger than the %pop who have the slightest interest (or comprehension) of what a 'metaphysical argument' might look like: both numbers being in single-digits most places.

We are/were a John Dewey set of avaricious pragmatists; no effete intellekshul debaters. Xians never read-through their Manuals! - else they would be Forced to Think about the legions of contradictions. We See: no such dialogue (generally) ergo: the legions just go on Sunday for infotainment, then the ball game.

There is NOTHING metaphysical in the current rash of Political ploys which have melded pseudo-philosophy, the deep-nastiness of the marginal in Any culture + Opportunity (in form of the cynical Neoconmen: who studied-up on focussing their Orwellian psych techniques on this group: the Fundies/Evangels.) Am reading his massive tome, Essays currently.. in stretches.

Even Shrub mouthed That Ploy *verbatim* re the 'Evangels-as-a-bloc' early on, in a session with Condi! IIRC. Migawd.. if Shrub could Get It . . .

How could You (with whom I have spoken.. even, on an infernal device with pushbuttons) Imagine that I'm some bloody acolyte of the Ontological Proof of Gawd (or even its fnaciful opposites and apposites) !?

(Hast thou in Fact: learned nada about what it means to reside within a fog like, "the world of Duality"?) Dost imagine! that I Imagine - that clever wordsmithing can produce an end-run around this circumscribed State of Existence?
Huh? uh huh.. uh huh-huh-huh

ie Fie on thine amateurish effort to entice moi into: spilling All the Beans in nice didactic How-to Manual prose, pabulum for the constitutionally mentally/emotionally Lazy? (Never mind the Hubris in all such promulgations, you Dit!)
We call such provocateurs: shill.

My 'small Hope' was about (and Merely about) -- the slim possibility that:
the currently ascendant Knaves just might not complete this web of disgusting manipulation of the gullible --
IF enough folks notice in time, just what it is they Are building.
(And obv. IWE is not-nearly a microcosm of the actual arena.)

Afoot is ( dost doubt it?) -
The meticulous re-Logo\ufffd-ing of our de facto Corporatocracy, which maintains and enhances its power via all manner of cant, and next - via pretending to be a Theocracy, for the succor of Gawd-fearing. [no need to complete the pun]
(Fear 'Gawd' and Corporate hegemony may well seem ~benign, IF Fear is your M.O. for a 'life' / if you don't dare ever, to Live, etc.)


Back to thy pastoral campus of the beautiful sleepwalkers and builders of Castles in the 11-dimensional Sky, y'hear!


Now, were there any Real questions here? I have a few Universes to attend to before supper.


I Who Be

Ah, fellow-DIT - you means, A Man Without a Country I guess. Hell, I've been lobbying 'ol Kurt via the Cosmic subspace Whine Machine - for years. Haven't got this one, but I fear that the Schlachthaus Funf brilliance hath bedimmed. Guess I gotta find out; surely he'll have a few incisive disembowellments of the robot-Neoconmen and their lackeys - should be worth a giggle, but won't be read by the self-infatuated anyway.

How many more Ways can he say it? We're a menace to all living creatures, once past learning how to build a fire. We eat our young or train-em up to be as dense as we (which may be the less merciful course? on a prison planet populated by loonies.)

You're prolly right.. let the tads grow-up beyond their seeking of algorithms as-if Holy Grail Mk II. Or not. Besides I doubt one Can 'teach Thinking', or even much about thinking - at all. It's Work and we are a play-oriented final-civilization in its throes. (If I weren't quite too lazy to rise at 5am daily, I might seek a nunnery - 'cept I hear they're running out of housekeepers too..)

Got Pratchett?
(Him I'd elect President in an augenblick. One of few Original minds still breathing? Punster, yes - but just his indulgence.)
He's nailed homo-sap, and retains the necessary cosmic humour - for survival of the sufficiently mirth-filled. I must now ration his opera, as it is not infinite in extent :( Going Postal just now, with the "clacks" == his version of skewering er 'Communications Technology' cha cha cha


Stay well; don't Believe stuff - especially de moi!


Neither a Quixote nor a Panza be; invisibility is the best a man can achieve in an asylum.