Negative Dialectics

I don’t understand that very clearly.

Not badly done, Emma.

Austin is reputed to have said “Its not interesting is it, that in every language a double negative is not a positive, whereas a double positive is not never a negative”, to which Morgenbesser is reputed to have muttered “Not Yeah, Yeah”

Ok that doesn’t work.

@6:

I assume you mean, “I don’t understand that extremely clearly.” (As it is, it’s ambiguous.)

It’s easy (and necessary) to mock Trump, but the objective facts are that all words spoken by everyone, anywhere (apart from ‘who gives a shit?’ or the equivalent) about #russiagate, are pointless, and meaningless. It’s not entirely clear to me that Trump’s meaningless (and self-contradictory) ramblings on this topic are fundamentally any more meaningless and self-contradictory than anyone else’s.

but, but, bud –
@ph
Hidari might have beaten US to the fun some by at least two diapers – with:

”but the objective facts are that all words spoken by everyone, anywhere (apart from ‘who gives a shit?’ or the equivalent) about #russiagate, are pointless, and meaningless”.

Agreed again – as when you are dealing with small body parts – who act completely independently from the rest of some human pound of flesh – a Philosopher might say:

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
or perhaps even better:
“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”
or let’s ask Hidari if he prefers:

“Without Russian music, life would be a mistake.” …

See Language Log, Misnegation as a political tool.

Well John after that I suppose my question is, you are saying that Nietzsche would not ever have been surprised, if tomorrow Trump returns, to negate his negation today, like his correction after his correction after Charlottesville, sort of a triple negative?

I agree. It is a truth universally (coming-to-be) acknowledged that it doesn’t matter what Trump says/

He could shoot himself in the middle of Fifth Avenue, he’s completely full of shit, he’ll reverse himself tomorrow, it’ll be a triple axel negative, just like the rhetorical aftermath of Charlottesville

His is the Eternal Return of being completely full of shit

And again the mainstream media will be enthralled near endlessly…

But his opponents? Well, his opponents had better have all their facts straight!

“The Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, also communicated with U.S. persons about the release of stolen documents. On or about August 15, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, wrote to a person who was in regular contact with senior members of the Presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump…” –from the indictment filed July 13

Note that the investigation hasn’t released anything yet about the various “U.S. persons” who are described to be on the receiving end. So I am just trying hard not to imagine too good how any self-respecting little grifters who don’t care about the truth would have done themselves proud not to ignore these ignoble overtures.

“U.S. persons” who already appear to be liable to accessory after the fact to felony hacking, even before We the People get the full story. And might turn state’s evidence given the July 13 demonstration of just how much granular detail the prosecutors already possess.

P.S. Meanwhile there’s a really good book waiting to be written on how the Trump media machine changes its spin, often from day to day. For example, now the Faux News cackle-bobbleheads-in-a-box have begun to parrot, “Okay, jus’ mebbe there was meddling, but, gol dang it, there was no collusion!”

I think this one may last until the next indictment. Then the next excuse will be, “Okay there was collusion, but Trump himself didn’t know!”

Because, you know, you can believe everything he double negates

Ah, if Prof. Irwin Corey could return to applaud Lee A. Arnold’s twirls and twists @20.

The ability to laugh at the devil is essential to answering Camus’ one philosophical question. This thread is why I check CT every morning.

Namaste

Who would have pegged our dear cable-news-addled president as such an astute reader of Clifford Geertz?

A scholar can hardly be better employed than in destroying a fear. The one I want to go after is Russian interference in the 2016 election. Not the thing itself, which I think merely there, like Transylvania, but the dread of it, which I think unfounded. It is unfounded because the moral and intellectual consequences that are commonly supposed to flow from the Russian interference—subjectivism, nihilism, incoherence, Machiavellianism, ethical idiocy, esthetic blindness, and so on—do not in fact do so and the promised rewards of escaping its clutches, mostly having to do with pasteurized American exceptionalism, are illusory.

To be more specific, I want not to defend Russian interference in the 2016 election, which is a drained term anyway, yesterday’s battle cry, but to attack Russiagate, which seems to me broadly on the rise and to represent a streamlined version of an antique mistake. Whatever the Russian interference may be or originally have been (and there is not one of its critics in a hundred who has got that right), it serves these days largely as a specter to scare us away from certain ways of thinking and toward others. And, as the ways of thinking away from which we are being driven seem to me to be more cogent than those toward which we are being propelled, and to lie at the heart of the leftist heritage, I would like to do something about this. Casting out demons is a praxis we should practice as well as study.

My through-the-looking-glass title is intended to suggest such an effort to counter a view rather than to defend the view it claims to be counter to. The analogy I had in mind in choosing it—a logical one, I trust it will be understood, not in any way a substantive one—is what, at the height of the Cold War days (you remember them) was called “anti anti-communism.” Those of us who strenuously opposed the obsession, as we saw it, with the Red Menace were thus denominated by those who, as they saw it, regarded the Menace as the primary fact of contemporary political life, with the insinuation—wildly incorrect in the vast majority of cases—that, by the law of the double negative, we had some secret affection for the Soviet Union.

Again, I mean to use this analogy in a formal sense; I don’t think Russians are like communists, anti-Russians are like anti-communists, and that anyone (well… hardly anyone) is behaving like McCarthy. One could construct a similar parallelism using the abortion controversy. Those of us who are opposed to increased legal restrictions on abortion are not, I take it, pro-abortion, in the sense that we think abortion a wonderful thing and hold that the greater the abortion rate the greater the well-being of society; we are “anti anti-abortionists” for quite other reasons I need not rehearse. In this frame, the double negative simply doesn’t work in the usual way; and therein lies its rhetorical attractions. It enables one to reject something without thereby committing oneself to what it rejects. And this is precisely what I want to do with Russiagate.

“All Cretans are liars.”

“But, Epimenides, you, yourself, are a Cretan!”

“Wha? Oh. My bad. I meant to say ‘NOT all Cretans are liars.'”

Who among us would not say to any moment, “Verweile nicht! du bist so schön!”

“We are in a 9/11 national emergency because our country is under attack”, according to Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal. His response? “And this 9/11 moment demands that we do come together. Issue a subpoena not only for the translator and the notes but also for the national security team that debriefed the president about these supposed agreements in the sphere of international security…To name and shame”

So, we have the “Bush kept us safe from terrorist attacks” argument. (The hack occurred on Obama’s watch, but that’s not my point, today.) So, it’s 9/11 and the right response is for America to name and shame the perps. Campaign on that. Fortunately, it’s not.

But in the world of where facts don’t seem to align here’s where we are, the same people who feared the Orange Tweet-monster would antagonize the world and start WWIII are now losing their shit because a/the US president was too nice to a sometimes adversary. b/publicly admitted the US intelligence services have a less than stellar track record. And then there’s the body language and the 9/11 moment as final proof of collusion.

My guess is that Trump will turn this around as he so does. Pray he does. Trump’s critics have primed their part of the public for war with Russia and are intent on running on that argument in 2018. What if Trump decides he needs to prove he’s no Russian stooge?

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/07/17/stephen_f_cohen_do_you_prefer_impeaching_trump_or_avoiding_nuclear_war_with_russia.html

‘What if Trump decides he needs to prove he’s no Russian stooge?’

Trump supporter warning Trump critics not to give the crazy asshole he supports dumb ideas. Are there any other politicians out there whose supporters regularly wield them like a threat?

Foreigners stole our election.

https://bloggingheads.tv/videos/53228?in=73:13

Trump is not being aggressive enough! Let’s impeach him for that!. A great discussion on anti-Trump nuttiness.

The baseline argument that Trump stole the election is pure birther. America is not being run by a Russian stooge. Obama is not a secret Muslim. The moon landing was not faked. The earth is not 10,000 years old. Saddam is behind 9/11.

“If you believe in Russia-gate you’re living in a conspiracy theory.” Do I think Trump will attack Russia? No. Do I think Trump critics understand the contradictions and weaknesses of their arguments? No. Do I think Trump critics are bad or stupid?

I think Trump critics sound like crazy people too often. Good luck with it all!

The punchline, of course, is that in Russian a double negative can be a negative.

@36
”I think Trump critics sound like crazy people too often”.

For sure –
like this Trump critic who even doesn’t know yet – that Trump as ”Precident” – NOW is
”the government” –
and crazily writes:
”inconceivable that the government would break into a lawyer’s office (early in the morning) – almost unheard of”.

But as Von Clownstick promised US to destroy our government – there seems to be no other way that he totally destroys himself.
In order to prove that our ”favorite” President (Obama) did ”nothing wrong”!

Non omnis determinatio est negatio.

Politicalfootball #41: “If Trump starts a nuclear war…”

He is certainly setting up the preconditions for nuclear war in about 20 years as he unravels things now, particularly in the Middle East and the Pacific. There is desperate alarm in the IR community. But it will take a generation or more to play out, and it’s all a bit too complicated for his supporters. They are perhaps comforted by Trump’s diversions into blaming the New World Order Swamp, his simpletonian calls to increase the US nuclear arsenal, and the confusions of double negatives. Thus it is that world events are sown by simple lack of attention span.