Teleology in Politics

Maybe teleological plans move human political movements toward fulfillment. One has Democrats and Republicans in conflict  Homosexuals divided the polity with their approach to marriage while Republicans opposed ecological conservation and restoration. Over population needed to be halted because of fine resources and the ecosphere was being devastated. Some moral people couldn't go along with Democrat planks though they supported environmentalism.

No politicians knew what ecological economics are though Jeffrey Sachs did. Democrats were for war with Russia over Ukraine even if that meant WW 3 might occur  Republicans were for drilling saying drill baby drill and burn baby burn to fossil fuels. Trump was for peace, Musk for ten billion robots and super AI and that would end the need for ponzinomics that increase human population to keep the workforce young enough to support the prior generation in old age. Super AI in robots smart enough to work in most labor jobs well could be a danger yet let human population drop to sustainable levels while the ecosphere recovers.

That's all fascinating and something to find the answer to in twenty or thirty years. The human political powers don't get what they want yet perhaps God does.

AI Changes on a Small Town

Since 1990 I lived much of the time in a small Alaska town where the logging mill that was the major employer closed down a year or two later. The population hasn’t increased since the logging mostly stopped. World population is right and a half billion. Wrangell has around 2000 people. It is located in America’s last great coastal forest. Ever year young workers leave, yet dome wildlife recovers while fishing declines. AI will probably affect human conservation practices.

AI will make it more difficult for writers too. AI will soon write custom novels for anyone with an app the way it’s going, as if it were making a custom pizza. Musk said there may be 10 billion robots within 20 or 30 years. There is supposed to be a super AI upgrade next. Trump has that 500 billion dollar Stargate AI project going. Who knows where that will lead?

I would guess that traditional ponzinomics where population grows and increases resource consumption so the population can stay working age will be replaced by smart robot workers while the human population ages and decreases in number to some ecologically sustainable level.

Lots of changes ahead if WW 3 doesn’t happen. Wrangell may be lucky enough to just observe the changes for some time. It’s funny how science fiction is becoming fact.

I didn’t use FB’s AI grammar rewrite version in this comment. That version said Wrangell can observe and adapt to the changes. Fait accompli I guess.

Ado About E=mc²

Interesting to consider. Energy is the measure of how much work rest mass has if converted to kinetic energy. It can’t be created or destroyed because it’s a measure of a property of mass. A rest mass’  potential energy is E = mc2. In fusion explosions .07% of mass is converted into other forms and mass is reduced that much.

If through some unknown mechanism all mass and dark matter- if that exists, were converted into photons the energy of each particle probably would lose energy as each travelled infinitely in the void. Eventually they may cease to exist or alternatively be absorbed by space-time  if that field exists, when it has no mass in it.

Joe Biden's Pre-emptive Pardons for Family, Jan 6 Committee et al

In his last minutes as President Joe Biden issued pre-emptive pardons to several family members, the Jan 6 Committee and others for any crimes they may have perpetrated including, presumably, murder and treason.  The premise is that people may break nearly and federal law and be pardoned for that. Nixon could have pardoned all those charged in Watergate.

 Pre-emptive pardons for seem like unequal protection of the law and should be illegal. Courts never anticipated that an organized crime leader would take the Presidency and let his mob run amock perpetuating during his term and and grant the mob pre-emptive pardons against any criminal charges that might be made.

"Article II, Section 2, Clause 1:

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment."

Stop Spending on Ukraine

Russians lost about 6 million dead in WW 2; the most of the Soviet Union’s ethnic groups. As one with a balanced history background that included college courses in Russian history and the usual Western Civilization I understand and support the facts about US and global interests, unlike the Democrat Party leadership.

As an historical opinion I support Russia’s right to the Crimea and know that sharing Ukraine with Russia at 50% is the only rational policy. Pursuing false narratives promulgated since the Clinton carpet bagging land stolen berg days has harmed US global interests, credibility (people think it an opportunistic predator with a supportive propaganda media), effected a million casualties, made enemies of two WW2 allies and normalized nuclear brinkmanship. It’s also expensive with about a quarter trillion dumped to Ukraine.

The Soviet Union had an 800 mile front from the Black Sea and extended through Ukraine. Many Ukrainians were on the Nazi side killing Russians defending their homeland.

Russia was moving toward free enterprise and helped in the war against terrorism while Europe expanded NATO. Because of western greed we made an enemy of Russia and divided the world Economy between the BRIC nations and the west.

The world does not need to be politically divided in a second Cold War. A peaceful world with free trade, free enterprise and a transition to sustainable ecological economic policy cannot occur with a senseless war ongoing leading toward a stone age economy.

Those who forget the past are doomed to rest it was proven again true by the Democrats bungling of the end of the Cold war. Communism ended in the Soviet Union starting with a quarter million Soviet troops withdrawing from East Germany in Dec 1988. When communism ended peacefully it was difficult to avoid chaos. There was no government or people elected to the new governments. Yeltsin wrote a constitution for Russia.

There was no method to redistribute land that was public owned in the Soviet era into private ownership that was tested. Even as late as the mid 90s there were no income taxes on oligarchs and corporations.  Some way had to arise to keep Russia together and remove power from the Mafia and oligharchs. Putin had to find a way to set the power criteria of regional governments and rebuild the military based on the US volunteer force. It was a complex difficult period with free enterprise growing in Russia. American businesses were invested there. Then NATO expanded Eastward eyeballing Russia as it had since Napoleon and Poland had since 1500.

The Russian Presidency was given superpowers by the constitution. He needed it to keep the home made experiment in democracy together  I took a Coursera course online about Russian government from Petersburg University and researched online about Russian history since the end of the Cold War. It was a democracy. 

The maladroit Democrat Party choices to be runt-like political midgets living within the Cold War era paradigm with an enemy to the East was political recidivism and follow. Leadership was required rather than fear, paranoia and cowardice that required an expanded NATO, increases military expense and that couldn't understand or lead to what was needed to continue the Reagan-Gorbachev normalization of relations east and west.

   Russia has not sought conflict with the west besides restoration of it's sovereign lands in Ukraine. When Ukraine is shared those that would live in the non Russian areas should be free to move to West Ukraine and vice versa.

 Understanding politics with competence involves understanding what motivates leaders on select issues, and how and why they form policies. Civilizations end because of bad leadership sometimes, such as that which occurred in imperial Rome following the Antonines. 

 Democrat leadership after Reagan, and even that of George W Bush has made a series of bad decisions. My concern is for justice internationally of course, yet primarily is for America alienating half of the world from trade and trust, increasing public debt and becoming incapable of supporting a peaceful and productive global political economy.

Human Minds Don't Add Order to the Universe

Order exists implicitly with physical systems even if human or other minds interact with the order. Humans rapidly accelerate entropy (disorder) and global politics is possibly chaos with a frosting of order slathered upon it.

Non-locality probably has a meta-order unknowable even with quantum computer-led exploration of the dark side of the force

Europe Should Pay to Rebuild Ukraine if They Continue War After US Stops Supporting It

 Democrats have a different narrative about the causes of the Ukraine war than many conservatives. Democrats don't recognize that Ukraine was part of Russia until the communist revolution and that a recrudescent Russia would fight to get it back. president Clinton and the last communist President of the Soviet Union took all of Ukraine including Crimea, then N.A.T.O. expanded eastward setting the stage for war that Democrats did nothing to renegotiate and prevent the war. Instead they added more sanctions and hate to Russia to their maximum ability.

Should the United States pay anything to rebuild Ukraine when it's a Democrat mistake? Shouldn't they let Europeans pay to rebuild that devastated region instead if Europe continues the war after the United States new Republican administration stops throwing gas on the fire?

Necessary Being in relation to Contingent Being

Plotinus developed Plato's paradigm of forms in relation to The One in The Enneads. People should read it more to have an idea about what has gone before. 

    Even so the premise of separation of necessary from contingent being is comparable to a manufacturing process being separate from a product, or pluralism emanating from monism. Necessary being might render products or creations with whatever qualities He wants including non-being.we3e

Can Humans Know What's Really Real?

The blind man and the elephant seems an apt comparison. Humans can only know what is given, and that given is reality for humans. When other humans have similar experiences and when mathematics provides information concerning the structure of reality as knowable there is knowledge of the reality that humans encounter being formalized. That is pragmatic and useful.

Explorers could ever only discover phenomena and not noumena. They may use an associahedrons to find the scattering patterns and models of new particles yet not see with their own eyes the quantum realm of fermions. https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2024/10/associahedra_in_quantum_field.html

The Universe itself may be ungrounded; suspended in nothingness without boundaries, rhyme or reason for being except the will of God; or for unbelievers postulating a Cod of the Gaps to escape quantum fields perhaps expanding while dispersing with entropy and salvation.

Uncertainty and gaps; spacing intervals, being and non being, form and substance plus colors in some light allow the common experience for humanity. Human reality could be inside a kachinka doll or recursive puzzle box with greater and lesser realities.

 People need understand first what is given and proximal and perhaps non-local too sometime and speculate with metaphysics from the known; like Plato’s troglodyte prisoners, with logical inference, science and with whatever revealed knowledge from a superior being may be provided.

A question; how is an 'absolute' truth different from a truth? Kierkegaard hated Hegel's use of the word absolute. He thought it wasn't meaningful. Maybe he would have used Hume's metaphysical non-sense shears on it.

What I know of the Higgs field, massless particles beyond it, a pluralized unified field with finite content and non- locality brings me to a point of reserve and a little optimism about increasing understanding of the evident. If mind interacts with shaping experience there might be an order to.that as well. Standard forms seem like an ordinary presentation of the known.

I like some of the explanations for how optical organs developed finding light. So for whatever reason bodies that are entanglements of fermions configured themselves within overlapping fields derived from a unified field and sought energy. Sentients in time thought about the quanta that comprise substance then became skeptical about what reality is. 

Entangled in the Higgs field like the goat in the bush that substituted for Isaac as a sacrifice, the question arises of the extent that observation collapses the wave function of elements comprising the observed since non- locality was confirmed. Can one have an organic naive reality simultaneously with one viewed more from a quantum relativity paradigm in which mind is determining much of what it observes simply because it observed. Can that be consistent with organisms just inputting energy in a natural order. Do fire ants eating meat stop biting if one sleeps?

Bishop Berkeley's ideaism criterion remains possible even within a concurrent natural order. The Higgs field phenomena may be contingent to an unknown extent. Ideaism on a quantum, non-local form is ponderable.

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Cod of the Gaps Theories

Some people would like a cod of the gaps to escape the gill nets of logic capturing schools of generalized incomplete theories swimming the sea of uncertainty. Cod of the gaps escape synthetic constructions from diverse fields that build several modal theories that might explain a given phenomenon such as being and advance just one straw man or reductio in order to support their sole purpose; a mission to escape accountability to God on judgment day. Though the cod of the gaps slips through the nets of salvation it is yet in the sea of evermore set into Higgs Field entanglement hosting the phenomenon of being.

God may have created an evolving Universe in an instant or billions of years. Consider this however,; time and space are of a unified field processing entropy like a drop of oil in water breaking up into smaller drops. Time has no reality beyond the field. 

For God the Universe is comparable to a rubber ball expanding in size from pea size to palm size; its internal relativistic time is less than substantial for the Creator. For Him a billion years of evolution wouldn’t be equal to a second of His eternal being and the time is a local phenomenon implicit to experience of sentients within the super ball.

Nature of Space-Time

I believe space-time is a field in which people are embedded. It is a field with entropy becoming disorganized and that is what is regarded as time.

Incidentally it could be that If the primary fields of the Universe are finite in substance and all are stretching in expansion with entropy disassociating them that could be a reason for the apparent expansion of space time as  the fields themselves add gaps within themselves.  

 Mass happens to be entangled fermion-built entities experiencing entropy while bosons as massless particles in fields experience it less or not at all.

I have walked a fair amount in near total darkness in a forest with sharp dead lower branches sticking out all around. One keeps one's hand out in front to protect the eyes yet sweep for a path through. One can do that with eyes closed; it is all entirely conscious choices without subconsciousness playing a significant role. The subconscious and consciousness are all part of the phenomenon of mind arising from the brain though. Those synapses and neurons are part of one system that consciousness is the awareness of.

Correspondence and Disquotation Theory

I like correspondence theories. They differ from similar theories that Quine approached as disquotation theory. It's more of an analytic linguistic paradigm concerning language.

For example if one has a list of a thousand member Boolean truth table and says is it true that E4 is a zero, one can look at E4 to see if it contains a zero and if it does answer yes it's true. One need not have a realist paradigm for truth values to affirm that truth exists. Truth exists in language relations, even for science. Words are descriptions about objects and relations and it's easy to go wrong when extending the reality of truth beyond language.

Keep in mind that philosophers can differ about what real objects are, as may physicists. Some regard field monism as actual albeit with clumsiness of entangled fermions here and there. There are additional theories for ontology. Quine felt that modal universes had language lexicons that were unique regarding identifiers. The identifiers weren't translatable from one lexicon to the next.

Disquotation theory parameters alleviate one from elucidating an entire list. It can be used, that is the word true can be used to affirm that a state of affairs exists.

For example if someone asks if it is true that it isn't raining outside one may reply with yes or no instead of saying that it isn't raining anywhere on Earth or other planets outside the room.

My examples weren't very good.

Disquotation theory allowd truth value parameters to be applied to a great number of questions that would otherwise require enumerating each member of a set.

Maybe someone could that it's true that class of women are beautiful instead of saying the name of each woman of the class and stipulating that she has beauty.

 Pragmatically something that works also is/exists. Disquotation theory works, like Boolean truth tables at relating what is. Some believe truth has a realist or neo-realist character; I would grant that only God has that. I like the idea that ideas are conditional about physical propositions.

It's probably fine to use correspondence theory so far as one knows the lexicon modality for corresponding expressions.

Disquotation theory abbreviates lists. The categorical problem of assuming that words have an actual relationship to objects; that the word apple is really part of the generally red or gold fruit per example, is often the point of contention for applying theories of truth to 'objects'.

Truth is a comment about the existence of things. One tests the existence of those propositions about things. Only God is truth itself and for-others who cannot be tested.

Titled Tuesday: Rapport's Dutch Attack in Action!

Dry Up Under-the -Table Labor

 The bottom 50% of Americans have 2.6% of the nation’s wealth. Wealth inequality does create plutocracy, yet few realize. Capital increases much faster than labor wages. Of course Biden did absolutely nothing about it. What does matter though is that the poorest 10% just haven’t got much of a way to escape poverty, and that should be easy to solve. Most Americans just say to ‘get a job’, without comprehending what the challenges are. Keeping illegal aliens out should create a few more jobs at labor ready when the supply of under the table labor dries up.of

Regardless of the distribution of wealth inequality it should be a national priority to relieve the most poor 10% of the population from dire poverty. There will always be those that cannot get hired to a decent job for myriad reasons; ugly, uneducated, ex-felon, persecuted, old, sickly etc. It is cruel in the rich modern economy where the median income of the bottom 50% is $51,000 per household to not relieve the most poor. Fifty thousand is itself a different social class than those living on fewer than annually $10,000. 

It should be made impossible for any American to have less than $10,000 annually to live on. If the most poor were relieved the nation would be a more decent society with the most cruel and even sadistic aspects of capitalism expunged. Palaver about redistribution and communism for tax increases on the rich could be allowed to fade. If the majority don't mind having just 2.6% of the wealth that would be their concern. The most poor just never appear on the political radar screen of anyone in politics.

Sanction Europe on LNG Until It Ends Hostilities With Russia

Joe Biden has done everything he can to stop President Trump from bringing an end to the Ukraine-Russia war. He has arranged for war to continue through the next Presidential election in 2028 if possible. N.A.T.O. members will take up the slack if Trump stops sending weapons to Ukraine.

One shouldn't underestimate Europe's will to make self-destructive political choices; they are idiots rather than peace makers or pragmatists  As at the end of WW 2 the USA will need to take the retards under it's armpit and lead it to prosperity and health while the mutt resists the bath.

Old Europe and N.A.T.O. is composed of numerous small, formerly imperial nations that sought global colonies. After Bill Clinton it began to expand in number growing to become somewhat of a monster in size. It is as if dozens of Chihuahuas could unite to become a big dog with the fierceness of a chihuahua. The dog yet has multiple personalities; some in paranoia, some with imperial ambition, and has become a potential threat to the United States directly and indirectly.  perpetrating further conflict with Russia may incite World War Three. Joe Biden has trained N.A.T.O. to expect the U.S.A. to be Europe's bimbo/lesbo enforcer doing its bidding. Americans in the media would go along with further war against Russia until the world is incinerated so they could appear to be patriotic in sycophancy with imperial ambitions.

   President Trump will need to negotiate with Europe simultaneously with Russia and Ukraine to stop the war. N.A.T.O. will seek to create a Gulf of Tonkin Resolution circumstance to force a full N.A.T.O. attack including the U.S.A. on Russia before a peace settlement is made. Peace should be a 50-50 value division of Ukraine with Russia, an end to tariffs and sanctions on both countries and reconstruction of Ukraine paid for by England, France and Germany.

  There should be a tax free DMZ along the shared border that is five miles wide to encourage trade and catalyze reconstruction. Sanctions should be placed on N.A.T.O.embers in Europe so they don’t receive U.S. fuel supplies or natural gas until they end hostilities with Russia. The world needs peace now and a recovering economy morphing into environmental economy for a more verdant planet.

Unscientific Generalities on the Etiology of Religion

 I am very cool on archetypes of collective subconsciousness such as Jung developed as a theory. The concept of projections is equally dubious today. As applied to God it conflates history at a massive scale positing a common cause for events and ideas that are mostly lost from history. One tribe may have had a different reason for beginning an idea than another. In the case of Abraham, that wasn't a collective experience. It was an individual, personal encounter. David Rosenberg wrote a biography for Abraham that is a very interesting read.

 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/502016.Abraham

The Tower was one of Jung’s archetypes as well as a novel by Stephen King. People today ought to be able to sort out their ideas about reality and know what they think about particular aspects of it. There is a tendency toward postulating a common explanation without much basis for a panoply of events that are selected and lumped together. Conscious ideas about reality differ from those of the subconscious and tend to arise from experience and education.  There is a field of study called the history of ideas. Generally they require pretty good support for the origin of ideas in order not to be myths themselves.

Consider the Japanese Shinto religion for example. Where did the idea of Tori-spirit gates arise? I don’t know. Here is a good mythical account though that differs from some sort of common human projection…

A warlord made an heroic last stand in the gate of a wooden fortress on fire. His clan saw his dedication to defeating the overwhelming power of the enemy, yet at last, overcome by wounds he fell to his knees and was then beheaded. His forces were being driven back at the sight of their fallen leader. Just then a great eagle descended from the sky amidst the battle landing atop the gate and the warriors of the fallen hero knew the spirit of the warlord had returned. They rallied and drove back the enemy to the sea. Thereafter the spirit gate was recognized as a place where the spirits of the dead returned to help those still living in the world.

Pagan religion may have each had a different origin. In some cases kings simply declared themselves to be a god. Jews, Christians and Muslims share a common origin of their faith through Abraham and successors that wasn’t a projection of consciousness comparable to the origin of polytheists and numerous other belief systems. It is easy to construct a generality as an explanation for the unknown, yet unscientific.

Deficiencies In A.I. Text to Speech Reading for Ads

 For a while at least people will be able to discern the differences between A.I. readers of internet advertisements and stories with those of humans. Human tend to make some speech errors that differ from those of A.I. A.I. may pronounce ‘minerals’ ‘minurals’ as in manure for example, while a human if intentionally mispronouncing a a word would tend use a popular demotic political or innuendo spin replacement.

Lost to history are human pronunciations of ‘program’, ‘progrum’. It would be laughable if an A.I. said progrum.

With the rise of robots sales replacement workers in corporate jobs will accelerate. One can imagine Amazon using lots of robots to replace humans. I once looked for labor work in Phoenix years ago and would stand in a long line at labor ready hoping to get hired to no avail. Same story in Albuquerque.

The only jobs illegal aliens didn’t take were regular corporate jobs where illegals can’t be hired because the penalties would be too great for regular corporations to take the risk. All of the ad hoc jobs for working at Democrat owned homes were filled by illegal aliens. Robots will make it even more difficult to find work. No point in riding a bike to Apache Junction at 3 in the morning to find work with labor ready because there isn't any. Well, I did get four hours work at a Home Depot in Phoenix putting up shelves.

So Americans may tend to learn A.I. accented speech since that is what they are increasingly listening too. There are numerous A.I. text reader services available at the Google Play Store and elsewhere that do a very credible job of reading text. Business making advertisements use it a lot since it’s far cheaper than human actor-readers.

I like those Facebook stories with a photo perhaps generated by AI of a brown bear supplicant to a human for help removing a bear trap from a paw, or to follow it into the woods to rescue a cub from a well. One need write a decent story and A.I. will read the engaging story of human compassionate binding with a troubled wild animal that often becomes a friend for life and returns to visit annually. Many of them use the same A.I. reader. I had thought about having A.I. generate a photo of a troubled bear that had grown pig’s wings because of an evil scientist’s experiment cooking pharmaceuticals in a dark forest on innocent animal vectors that escaped to plea with the first human they found who happened to have parachuted in a halo jump to make it to a polling place, yet the project didn’t work out. I was limited to about 3 minutes reading with the free version of the A.I. reader. The flying bear epic never got off the ground.

I probably should wait until A.I. makes a lot of non-standard regional accents available, or talks in Tlingit language, before I try to make any fiction video short stories.

Saved by Faith, Not Works

Calvinists believe one is saved through faith alone (sola fide). Yet believe that if one is saved they shall do good works. Some say that if one doesn't show good works then they probably weren't saved. Calvinists believe scripture including that of James. The brother of Jesus said in chapter 2:"

14 "What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?" 15 If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food,

16 And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?

17 Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.

18 Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.

19 Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.

20 But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?"

Though Christians are saved through faith, they have an avocation in the world. Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:10 ""For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them".

 Even good works are the result of grace

The Universe Isn't Made of Algorithms

Algorithms occur in an incomplete paradigm where a sum or answer is wanted. Much of the Universe may be in a Algorithms are structures; structures used to process information or data points presented within someone’s lexicon universe. Like D9 caterpillars AI can push a lot of stuff. Is the Universe made of algorithms? No. 

Algorithms exists in the universe though, in some way.
I like the new structure associahedrons used for calculating particle interaction. Quantum entanglement that occurs possibly even at billions of light years distance isn’t likely to perform algorithms, unless a designer made it so, instead there should a direct relationship. rather than a calculating continuum although change seems perpetual from a human perspective.

There are responsive structures in the Universe at some scale greater than the four dimensions of space-time. I don’t believe that is machine learning or deep learning or neural network algorithmic structures.
https://youtu.be/UhG56kltfP4?feature=shared

A Reply to a Fellow Arguing that Christians Should Use Violence to Resist State Oppression

 You have written well in support of violence to resist oppression. You would like Christians to join with the violence in order to overthrow the corrupt. Morality you say is not what’s practical, it is what is right. On that point I would point out that for me, morality is what people actually do rather than an a priori code of conduct, unless it is true divine command.

Original sin is the human condition. There will never be a perfect and just government on Earth until the second coming of Christ. Christian conduct and ethics are for Christians. If everyone acted with true Christian ethics worldly governance would be better. Christ led by example; followers are to conduct themselves as best as they can in his way.

Human conflicts and human nature supply wrong answers and paradigms to solve political problems quite often. One who has witnessed the bungling of the post Cold War peace by the west leading to the Ukraine conflict and the million casualties roughly, or the first Syrian Civil War during the Obama era causing hundred of thousands of casualties and numerous other events of equally avoidable stature should realize that there is no point for Christians to chase after military powers or engage in civil wars as if they would bring about a just society of permanent duration.

Christians are supposed to keep their focus on the eternal time paradigm with God instead of the temporal where as Shakespeare wrote “It is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.” God has a plan for ideal human conduct for the kingdom of God. Mankind has very different ends than being in accord with God. Worldly codes of conduct are different than eternal codes. It is like comparing apples and shoes.

Christians can simply lead by example. They need to be the good news of Jesus Christ to those lost to wickedness, violence, corruption, exploitation, greed, envy and usual Machiavellian means of human conduct. That probably can't be accomplished by leading the charge in kamikaze attacks on the enemy. As a jihadist.

I believe your historical analysis is simplistic. Hitler was put into power by the high command of the Wehrmacht. He was sent to take over leadership of the Socialist Democratic Workers party with his recognizable charisma. Hitler had the inside track and easily became the leader. He was supported by the S.A. that was largely comprised of former socialists. They used violence and took down opposition leadership. After the German civil war deposed the aristocrats they needed to find a new avenue back into power and that was through Adolph Hitler and the NAZI party. Mussolini’s philosophy of corporatism developed by the Nazis brought the rich aristocrats into a new relation with the state uniting corporate leadership under the Fuhrer. That was an irresistible force for the Nazis. Germans did not know before the fact what extremes the Nazis would enact. Maybe they seemed  morally correct to many before the war. Even in the United States eugenics were popular with some doctors. A few Christians like Dietrich Bonhoeffer did resit Hitler at the cost of their life.

Stalin was a ruthless dictator using state means to repress the public. With such power organized resistance domestically was nearly futile. Revolt needed simply to evolve within leadership ranks of the communist party such that the system could itself defect to non-being. If you were to read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago volumes 1-3 and a dozen other books on Russian history (I did) you might have a better idea about the nature of the regime and it’s means of control.

Christians are not submitting to unjust systems; for that matter all worldly systems have an element of injustice in them I would think, they are submitting to God’s will for humanity. The worldly system is that of outsiders to the theonomy that do the crazy things they do making life hell for people that Christians are not going to be part of.

There would be limits for Christians immersed in a corrupt system. Not so many Christians have the courage of Peter or Paul to be faithful unto death. Some do, some don’t. What Christians couldn’t do would be to perpetrate unjust acts themselves at the order of the state I would think, yet those are hypotheticals.

Slavery hasn’t actually ended everywhere, yet in the 19th century when it was ending it was largely conferred from above upon the enslaved. Britain’s motivated by Magna Carta ended slavery in their possessions. In the United States the government ended slavery in passing in order to keep the nation undivided. Southern slave state wanted to be free to violate state’s rights and assert their right to go into other states to capture and return escaped slaves. The U.S. Government couldn’t tolerate that and the slave states rebelled against the government. One might seem an element of divine providence in the end of slavery in the U.S.A.

I think the South Africans could have kept apartheid going for quite some time if the institution hadn’t become obsolete. The west no longer supported that policy.  Without sanctions and disapprobation of the west it might have continued although it might have perished from internal rot. Negotiations to end apartheid started in May 19900. That was a hopeful time when the Soviet Union was crumbling. Russians had withdrawn a quarter million soldiers from East Germany in December 1989. One might see a divine hand in the events. Ronald Reagan was a man of faith.

-another reply

This is rather tedious yet I will need to itemize your points and reply. I have other things to do with my time.

1) I deny that my points are full of logical fallacies.

2) If you were advocating non-violent resistance to slavery and political oppression by Hitler and Stalin, that wasn’t the language you used. In democracy at least Christians are free to resist corruption through lawful means. I am glad that you do not advocate violence- it seemed that way.

3) I will quote the third point you made; “You also assert that morality is what people “actually do” unless it’s “true divine command,” but that’s an unproven premise. Your argument assumes divine command exists and that it’s the ultimate authority without providing any evidence for this claim.”

My viewpoint on morality is a philosophical one. Since there are so many varieties of moral packages in existence it is what the most realistic observation is so far as my opinion goes

Christian ethics are meaningful because of divine instruction. Christians believe that. The belief is not reliant on agnostic or atheist confirmation about being sourced from God.

4) It is not a false dichotomy to assert that divine commands are not secular.  Christians can follow divine commands while the lost are free to follow secular moral systems that are incomplete and disregard divine commands.  As I said there are a variety of moral systems and structures in existence. Many of those are incomplete and illogical.

5) Saying that there won’t be a perfect government until the second coming is not futility. I have worked to improve secular government for perhaps 40 years and that was futility. Humans repeat te same errors and inherit ignorance from generation to generations. “We learn from history that we do not learn from history”.

6) You wrote; “Hitler didn’t rise to power solely through the Wehrmacht or aristocrats; his rise was enabled by economic despair, anti-Semitism, and widespread support for his ideology, which he openly laid out in Mein Kampf.”

Hitler was ordered by the high command to infiltrate leadership of the German National Socialiist Workers Party. Obviously the economy and political structure was unstable and royalty had been overthrown. Hitler’s rise was engineered and then followed the build up phenomena such as being imprisoned for the Munich puscht where Rudolph Hess wrote Mein Kampf as Hitler dictated.  AI;”he Sturmabteilung (SA), also known as the "brownshirts", supported Adolf Hitler in the failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, also known as the Munich Putsch”. Hitler’s movement had power behind it from the start.

The SS and Gestapo also supported Hitler when he purged the leadership of the very dangerous S.A. in 1934 killing about 150 members include Ernst Roem.

7) You wrote “Similarly, while Stalin was a ruthless dictator his regime relied not just on top-down repression but on complicity from countless collaborators.”

Stalin was a ruthless dictator who continuously consolidated power in the communist party that was itself a minority movement. Just the dekulakization program to eliminate working class property killed 400,000. Twenty million people were liquidated by Stalin’s communist subordinates. Maybe you aren’t aware of what secret police forces did in the Soviet Union, or Iraq, Syria and Iran. The K.G.B. leader Beria had a room in a basement where he would take people to shoot them in the head himself. The Soviet experiement was a radical, aggressive program to weed out ‘anti-soviet activity’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin

8) To portray Hitler or Stalin as religious leaders is laughable.

9) You wrote “Your take on apartheid and slavery is downright dismissive. Saying apartheid could have lasted longer if it hadn’t become “obsolete” trivializes the suffering of millions who endured institutionalized racism. It wasn’t “obsolete”—it was unsustainable because of internal resistance and external pressure.”

Internal and external pressure to change is why apartheid was obsolete. I don’t have time or inclination to write a book on that topic. The slave revolt of Haiti was one of the few that was successful. The mistake they made was in inviting the former slavers to return to Haiti to make the plantations work and create jobs. Many of the former slavers did return to be executed. That created part of the problem for Haiti that lasted to the present.

10) You wrote “ By crediting divine intervention, you conveniently absolve human systems of their responsibility for perpetuating these atrocities.’

That isn’t even nominally logical. Compare “by crediting the F.B.I. for stopping drug trafficking, you conveniently absolve drug traffickers for perpetuating drug trafficking."

11) Christians don’t need to “claim the high moral ground”. You misunderstand Christian ethics and assume they are in competition with secular moral systems. Christians may act to put positive spin on political phenomenalities when it might do some good. Others might not want Christians to do that even in democracy perhaps.