 So this is not a super chat, but it's a comment somebody made in the thing that I want to correct. He says, I think it's much better to say it rather than being anti-Trump is that we ought to criticize him when he's wrong and recognize him when he's right. And I hear this all the time. And I completely object to this approach to evaluating politicians and political candidates. They are people that are bad people, you know, that are bad presidents, even the worst Democrat did a few things, right? I mean, you know, the certain things that Obama did were right, but it wasn't. Who cares? It didn't matter. The question is, what direction did they move the country in? Did they move the country towards freedom or towards less freedom? Did they enhance the separation of powers of the United States? Did they enhance the role of the president or did they diminish that? Did they support the Constitution or didn't they support the Constitution? And it's not a matter of adding up how many, you can do one thing that is so destructive. John Adams, the Sedition Act is so destructive that it doesn't matter what he did in the rest of his presidency. That one thing is greater and more important and more significant in terms of his presidency, and indeed he wasn't re-elected, than any other good thing he might have done during his presidency. And I think, you know, Bush's presidency is a disaster and it doesn't matter that he cut taxes and it doesn't matter that, you know, I think the same thing is true of Trump. I think if you look at the quality of the bad things that he's done, they far outweigh, not the quantity, the quality, the weight, the importance of the bad things being done is far exceeds those few things that are good. And then what happens is, when a bad person does a good thing, then the good thing is tainted by the fact that a bad person did it. And I think that's going to be the case of the good things that Trump did. They're going to be so tainted by the fact that it was Trump that they will be easily and quickly reversed when the time comes and ultimately the long-term damage is magnified dramatically. So again, when I look at Trump, and there is something that he did that happens to be consistent with moving in the direction of, you know, more individual rights. So he deregulates something, say, okay, great. He's talking about deregulating pie baking. Pie baking, he's going to deregulate pie baking. In all the feeds, there's some regulations about pie baking that they're going to reduce. And I'm all for that, that's great. Sure, sure. So here's the thing though, right? So when I look at something like that, I think, okay, when he's doing it, he's not doing it because he is animated by the principle of individual rights on which our country was founded. And he's trying to figure out how he can implement that principle in different areas and he judges that, you know, pie baking for whatever reason is one of the places that he needs to go ahead and try to make a little progress. And it is pragmatism. It is literally Trump trying to satisfy, not even, you know, pure William James pragmatism style, William James said, try to satisfy as many demands as possible. That was, you know, what a good pragmatist would do. You try to satisfy as many demands as possible simultaneously. The fact that something is demanded by a human being thereby makes it good according to a pragmatist. But Trump is not even that. Trump is trying to satisfy as many demands as possible as is consistent with getting reelected. You know, for whatever reason, Loved by his base of being, it's more about the the narcissism. It's more about being left behind. And he's appointed some good people to some offices, which he doesn't care that much about and they're doing good things. And he's not stopping them because there's no incentive. Grinnell, I really like Grinnell. Richard Grinnell, the ambassador. Oh, he's done some great things. Germany. Look him up. Okay. All right, let's see what else do we have here. Which Democrat is a palatable alternative to Trump? I mean, does there have to be one for us to not like Trump? I'm not sure there is one. And let's see. Let's see. Because I think they're, I think, I think right now there's something like 12,000 Democratic presidential candidates. Plus or minus 11,000 or something like that. I can't keep track. Somebody just announced yesterday, some congressman announced yesterday, he's running for president. So let's when you ball it down to five, six, maybe 10, we can talk. But right now, my core epistemology is denying me the ability to judge them. But see, you are, you are evading the central commandment of basically. Now shall love Trump because there's no better alternative. Yes. Yes, exactly. Or the way I was going to put it, you know, because the commandments, they should always be in, you know, you can't do whatever it is. Thou shalt not criticize Trump unless thou canst name a better alternative. The relationship of what the mystic, or the nihilistic can give to the tillers, but what, why do the mystics need the tillers? What is the relationship the other way? What does... Why the mystics? Yes. Because the mystics first and motivating force is dread of physical reality. Since it is a man who holds his emotions above reality, who in any conflict between his feelings and the facts of reality will select his feelings and will abandon the reality or denied. He cannot deal with reality at all. And his mysticism is a form of escape from the necessity to deal with reality or with facts. Therefore, he needs a tiller as a protector. He needs a tiller to save him from the necessity of dealing with facts, to provide his material livelihood and to enforce his ethics on the victims. Well, earlier you said that each culture should have its philosopher and then the intellectual should be the people who more or less put the philosophy into action. That's right. Now, it seems to me that there's another side, another issue of this too. What about science? Well, science is a very recent phenomenon. Science is of course the product of the 19th century of the industrial revolution of capitalism, of a free society. Now, I must mention the third type of man who has been very seldom the ruler of history or of any society. He has been the forgotten and exploited man of history. That is the man who lives by means of reason. That is the man who in his psycho epistemology is not guided by his immediate perceptions, nor by his emotions, but by logic, by his concepts, by reason. That is the man whom I call the producer. He is the man who creates not only the material values of mankind, but also and above all the intellectual, the philosophical values. The first producer in history in this higher sense of the word would be Aristotle, who was the first rational philosopher. Scientists certainly should be producers. They are the men who are supposed to be and by the nature of their profession have to deal with the study of reality by means of using reason. Fortunately today, most of them, outside of their own narrow profession, outside of their laboratory in effect, are turning more mystical than any other group of men. The fault is partly theirs, but predominantly it is the fault of philosophers. Since there is no philosophical guidance at all, many scientists today are turning to which doctrine type of mysticism of their own.