Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Comey, Trump, and 8647

Trump Derangement Syndrome continues to drive our political enemies to show their true colors.

Of course, former FBI director James Comey knows what '86' means.

Should Comey spend some time in the slammer? Tulsi Gabbard thinks so.  I'm with Tulsi.  The right to free speech does not extend to the inciting of violence.

And you thought politics was a gentle(wo)manly debate conducted according to the political equivalent of the Marquess of Queensberry rules?  It was never quite like that in these United States, but lately things have become positively Schmittian, to borrow an adjective from Malcolm Pollack: it is time for a frank admission that our political opponents are enemies. Indeed, they are enemies who want to see us in prison.  Pollack and I serve up some quotations from Carl Schmitt and commentary thereupon; please do poke around in our archives.

Our enemies are well-advised to consider Hosea 8:7: "Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind."

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Bill Vallicella

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15 responses to “Comey, Trump, and 8647”

  1. Joe Odegaard Avatar
    Joe Odegaard

    86? Saint Thomas Becket was murdered in just such a way in the year of 1170: by suggestion.
    Either Comey goes to prison, or we are a giant step closer to civil war No. 2 .

    Reply
  2. BV Avatar
    BV

    Yes. Politics-by-assassination has to be nipped in the bud. Luigi Mangione needs to be tried, convicted, and executed.

    Reply
  3. EG Avatar
    EG

    Hi Bill,
    So maybe I’ll probe this a bit deeper; suppose things go in some favorable way that preserved your preferred shape of culture and reality, what’s the real upshot? Do you then get to ignore it and retreat to your inner citadel? After all this spilled ink and bytes and hard-nosed sober criticism and willingness to weaponize your words and arguments, what is really preserved that will be appreciated and celebrated (of this, as opposed to your genuine philosophy and more poetic thoughts) after you and your friends pass? You bequeath now the world to children and those who don’t even appreciate or respect your values, and those others who come after who don’t give a hoot about your values, what are you winning from your antagonism “enemies”?
    And saying this, I am also trying to get to a deeper question of the point of all of this (that being the need to scribble, to express [outward to what is the not-Self] at all); of all of this struggling and fighting against one another, but perhaps just this desire to stake positions and claims is just the mark of one having lived and evidence that one has taken all of this “seriously” in some way.

    Reply
  4. Joe Odegaard Avatar
    Joe Odegaard

    We have a moral obligation to fight against evil, and if that causes divisions and enemies, so be it.

    Reply
  5. Vito B. Caiati Avatar
    Vito B. Caiati

    Joe Odegaard,
    Your one-line comment nicely obliterates EG’s amoral insouciance, which he struts about as enlightenment. His dismissive comment on Bill’s clear-headed observation that “our political opponents are enemies” recalls his snide critique of Dimitri and me in June of last years, * when we were pushing back hard against the disgraceful Holocaust denier Doran who at one time but no longer frequented the comments page of Maverick Philosopher. Then, as now, EG fancies himself as the serene sage who stands above history, bemused by the passion that some of us display in the cause of what is true and good.
    Vito
    *EG in June 2024: “It is an interesting observation that these comments (and those that followed) could be plausibly seen as a kind of variation of “reality TV”; being as absorbing and animating as anything on an episode of say day time Jerry Springer.
    I suppose even for the better, or best of us, our human (social-cum-political) nature is inescapable, and we are just as likely to fall into our own errors, vices and get animated by things that upset us, etc. (and even independent of any sober consideration of what’s actually true.)”
    https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2024/06/reading-now-demonic-forces.html#comments

    Reply
  6. Joe Odegaard Avatar
    Joe Odegaard

    Grazie, Sig. Caiati.

    Reply
  7. EG Avatar
    EG

    Hi Bill,
    I’ll refrain from future comments. Sorry to be “amorally insouciant,” as Vito charges.

    Reply
  8. BV Avatar
    BV

    EG,
    Thank you for self-deporting. You’ve spared me the task of 86-ing you. I’ll let your comment stand for a day or two since Malcolm P informs me that he wants to register a complaint against you.

    Reply
  9. Malcolm Pollack Avatar
    Malcolm Pollack

    EG,

    “suppose things go in some favorable way that preserved your preferred shape of culture and reality, what’s the real upshot? Do you then get to ignore it and retreat to your inner citadel”?

    Of course you do. The point of fighting isn’t simply to fight, but to fight for something. Why would someone called from a peaceful life to do battle against an existential foe not return to the life he fought for once the enemy is vanquished? “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

    “After all this spilled ink and bytes and hard-nosed sober criticism and willingness to weaponize your words and arguments, what is really preserved that will be appreciated and celebrated (of this, as opposed to your genuine philosophy and more poetic thoughts) after you and your friends pass? You bequeath now the world to children and those who don’t even appreciate or respect your values…”

    They certainly won’t be very likely to appreciate or respect our values if we don’t show by example that they are worth defending. Nor will they have a chance to grow in wisdom enough to appreciate and benefit from our stewardship if we allow to be destroyed everything that it was our duty to cherish and preserve.
    There are reasons why hope and faith are among the highest of virtues. If we cannot have enough hope for our children that we consider it worth the effort to defend their inheritance, and if we lack sufficient faith to believe that what we fight for is good and true, and will prevail, then what are we even living for? A few shabby and transient pleasures before the candle sputters and dies?
    Burke:

    “But one of the first and most leading principles on which the commonwealth and the laws are consecrated, is lest the temporary possessors and life-renters in it, unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors, or of what is due to their posterity, should act as if they were the entire masters; that they should not think it amongst their rights to cut off the entail, or commit waste on the inheritance, by destroying at their pleasure the whole original fabric of their society; hazarding to leave to those who come after them, a ruin instead of an habitation – and teaching these successors as little to respect their contrivances, as they had themselves respected the institutions of their forefathers. By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer.”

    Reply
  10. Joe Odegaard Avatar
    Joe Odegaard

    The origin of the coded meaning of “86” goes back to the F-86 Saber Jet, because, if you were shot down by one in the Korean War, you were said to be “86’d”
    “86” meant kill in the first place.
    More info on the saber jet:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_F-86_Sabre
    The Saber had an 8 to 1 kill ratio.

    Reply
  11. Malcolm Pollack Avatar
    Malcolm Pollack

    Joe and Vito: well said.

    Reply
  12. BV Avatar
    BV

    Gentlemen:
    Thank you for your comments.
    Joe: why haven’t any of the TV pundits mentioned the F-86?

    Reply
  13. Joe Odegaard Avatar
    Joe Odegaard

    Hi brother Bill
    I think they have not mentioned the Saber Jet, because they are not aviation nerds whose dad flew fighters in combat.
    But that’s me, so I knew that.
    Plus, even if they knew, they wouldn’t say, because they want to downplay the meaning of “86”
    Video of Saber Jet: (13 seconds).
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZvhixlyfZ8

    Reply
  14. Stephen Avatar
    Stephen

    Seems a slippery slope. It’s hard to see how this is “inciting violence” in any way that should be relevant to curtailing free speech. Merely expressing that you think someone should be killed should be a first amendment exception?
    What if you say you think child abusers should be executed? Executing them is illegal under current US law, so you are inciting illegal violence against a class of people. Should you go to prison?
    What if you say “the referee should be strung up for that”? Is that “inciting violence”? Should you go to prison?

    Reply
  15. BV Avatar
    BV

    Joe, Vito, Malcolm,
    Thank you for sending the cyberpunk packing.
    Sometimes I think I am too ‘liberal’ in accepting comments. And to underscore the obvious: a man’s home is his castle, and the same goes for his cybercastle(s). This weblog is private property. You have no right to free speech once you cross my threshhold. And the same goes for me when I cross yours.

    Reply

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