Maverick Philosopher

Bill Maher versus David Mamet

About six minutes long. Topics: 2020 election and Jan 6. Tell me who you think 'won' and why.

Related: Three Notes on David Mamet.  From 2023. Vito Caiati and Dmitri Dain offer their typically astute comments.

Haitians, Cats, and Red Herrings

Do Haitians eat cats?

I don't know and I don't care. I do care that the Biden-Harris administration is violating the Constitution, undermining the rule of law, and destroying the country by importing illegal aliens. That's the issue. Whether Haitians chow down on what we consider pets is not the issue, but a distraction from it. It is an example of what is called a red herring.

Paradoxically, however, the current explosion of cat-memes,  far from distracting us from the relevant issue, is drawing attention to it, namely the invasion of illegals, which is not only permitted, but promoted by Biden-Harris.  This invasion will of course continue under a Harris-Walz administration, despite Kamala's brazen lies to the contrary. 

Here is Charlie Kirk and Donald Trump, Jr. on the issue.

My tone above is polite, but for some time now I've been wondering whether we really should be polite to our political enemies.  Do any of you have an opinion on the question you would be willing to share? 

Finally, I don't really want to believe that Haitians eat cats, but then again, where are all the cats in Port-au-Prince?

Sebastian Gorka Makes the Case for Trump before the Oxford Union

Magnificent

Dueling Articles

We need to revisit in thought if not in fact the practice of dueling. Later. In lieu of that, here are a couple of dueling articles. You know where I stand. How about you?

David Frum, The Ruin that a Trump Presidency Would Mean

Steve Cortes, Only Trump Can Save America

For the foolish Frum Ukraine is the only issue worth mentioning.. He neglects to observe, however, that the devastation of that country would not have occurred had Trump been president. 

Nothing else seems to interest him. And so he fails to understand Trump's broad appeal. Cortes gets it:

We confront a perilous moment in U.S. history. Our country suffers from sky-high violent crime, the ravages of an effectively open border, a subversive educational system, and the anxiety of an economy that punishes workers – all brought about, deliberately, by Joe Biden and his allies. [emphasis added.]

There you have the explanation of Trump's comeback in a nutshell. There is more to be said, but  the Cortes quotation cannot be beat for pith and punch.  

But let me tweak it a bit. For the average citizen, the order of concern is  (i) the economy, (ii) crime, (iii) the subversion and 'wokification' of curricula with the concomitant labelling of protestors at school board meetings as 'domestic terrorists,' and (iv) the wide-open border. Now I don't expect Joe Sixpack to understand the full ramifications of a wide-open border, but my surmise is that what really rankles him is the fact is that he is being played for a chump: he works long and hard, plays by the rules, obeys the law and has to watch global elitist lawbreakers allow illegal alien lawbreakers to invade his country, and then add insult to injury by smearing him as a 'racist' and a 'white supremacist.'

Without touching upon the deeper issues that exercise right-thinking historians, political scientists, and philosophers, we have in the four points mentioned an adequate explanation of Trump's ascendency.

Addendum

Anent the folly of Frum, vide Francis P. Sempa, "David Frum and the Axis of Errors."

Political Argumentation and Political Evolution

Top o' the Stack.  Written in May 2016 but still relevant. I defend the cogency of the  'Hillary is worse' defense of Donald Trump against Charles Murray.

In the January 2004 post scriptum I concede that the impressive 'Jacques,' an untenured Canadian philosopher whose name I cannot reveal because of vicious leftists such as Brian Leiter, gets the better of me in the comment thread.

Despite the infirmity of reason and the pointlessness of most discussions of controversial questions, some discussion can be profitable, can lead to mutual clarification, and in some rare cases effect a salutary modification of one's position.