2026-09-26 13:16 UTC
Replies (3)
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@LaughingCoyote@social.vivaldi.net 2026-09-29 06:10
@jon@social.vivaldi.net @Vivaldi@social.vivaldi.net Thomas Jefferson predicted it in his private letters when the drafters of the constitution rejected incorporation of his suggested fourth branch of government that aimed to bring all citizens into a direct role in their own governance in the form of local wards. Without it he was aware that any claim of "sovereignty in the people" was meaningless. His response basically was "c'est la vie"! as he acknowledged the constitution's failure serve to complete the revolution. As in all revolutions since, the men (and women) of revolution once they got hold of the machinery of state have tended to exclude the populations and communities who'd brought the revolutions. This is wonderfully described by Hannah Arendt in her book "On Revolution" in which she described the sacrifice of freedom, defined in the early Classical sense of direct control of citizens over their communities, for the social question of solving problems of material insecurity and want first, leading to various forms of bureaucratic despotism in all institutions of society including privately held so-called "public" corporations. Robespierre himself realized this terrible mistake he'd made in his last speech on the eve of his own execution by the guillotine that he'd promoted.
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@willrs@social.vivaldi.net 2026-09-26 20:54
@jon@social.vivaldi.net @Vivaldi@social.vivaldi.net I love Vivaldi but it's a perfect example of how messy and gray this discussion is because if it wasn't for Apple and Google, Vivaldi would not exist (or would not be a realistic choice because yous simply could not create a browser engine from scratch, it costs an absurd amount of money)
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@LaughingCoyote@social.vivaldi.net 2026-09-29 06:40
@jon@social.vivaldi.net @Vivaldi@social.vivaldi.net I can only wish that people are waking up. In my 73 years I've seen constant war for no reason but profit promoted by lies, destruction of what had been the greatest railroad network in the world, ascendance of Global rule by international corporations and dismantling of the industrial base of the US to direct increasing profit share to their shareholders and the new corporate aristocracy, the "unsettling of rural America" as the recently deceased Wendell Berry called it. I see mostly people being fed up with their personal situations with very little insight into larger context of why it is happening. Most Americans have been perfectly happy to let the world suffer their excesses, as long as they could go shopping on the cheap at others' expense. Our school systems, the philosophical premises of our science and so forth aren't designed to encourage transcendence of ourselves into something better. The 'I am better than thou' lack self-awareness promoted by the so-called 'critical theory' that has come to dominate in our universities exemplifies the worst of it. The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead was already aware of its limitations in the 1920s, as also the Germans Hannah Arendt and Konrad Jaspers.