HALF-FULL REPORT 06/09/23
Changing Metaethics
Trump Indicted Again
President Trump has been indicted twice over the alleged boxes of classified material stored at Mar-A-Lago. Yet Biden hid 1,850 documents containing classified material at the University of Delaware and additional boxes in his garage, at the University of Pennsylvania, and in the Washington D.C. Chinatown area with no word from the DOJ and FBI.
The indictment diverted the daily narrative from the Congressional discovery of two checks written to Joe and Hunter Biden, drawn on account of Burisma.
Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Miami, will preside over the case. Leftists are furious over Cannon’s appointment, fearing she will hold a trial instead of issuing a summary judgment against Trump.
America’s two-tiered justice system is on full display as Democrats fear Trump’s lead in the polls is well beyond their ability to cheat. The FBI fears a “retribution president,” meaning a pissed-off Trump returning to the White House and intent on delivering his famous counterpunch to corrupt federal administrators.
Republicans announced that their alternative to Angry Trump or DeSantis is Judas Iscariot himself, Mike Pence. Clearly, Pence is unacceptable to most Americans. The entry of Pence empowers the old thesis-antithesis-synthesis rhetorical trick where Trump is too hot, Pence is too cold, and DeSantis is just right.
However, it’s not working as Trump’s support continues to grow as a reaction to the two-tiered justice system. Democrats blame Twitter and its “free” speech policy while big tech is frantically trying to build out Threads, the Twitter alternative on Instagram. Insiders report developmental problems from insufficiently skilled coders and reliance on buggy A.I. coding tools. Once again, Facebook/Meta is demonstrating that their current woke and diverse workforce cannot replicate the performance of their original developers.
Biden Bribes
In exchange for canceling the vote to hold FBI director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress, a credible six-figure salaried FBI confidential informant leaked information to Congress about bribes paid to the Bidens from Ukraine. Well, not just bribes, but at least two $5 million bribes paid to Joe and his boy, Hunter, in 2015-2016. During a presentation to the CFR in 2018, Joe Biden bragged about forcing then-president Poroshenko of Ukraine, to fire Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, as a condition of receiving $1 Billion in foreign aid.
Shokin was investigating corruption surrounding Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company, for its attempts to purchase an unnamed U.S. oil and gas company. Burisma hired Hunter Biden and paid him $1 million per year, as well as Mitt Romney’s son and one of Nancy Pelosi’s sons to help facilitate the acquisition.
The purchase would have enabled Burisma and Ukraine to gain additional leverage within the U.S. Congress and facilitated the sale of Russian hydrocarbons by shuttering oil and gas fracking in the United States. Presumably, the company Burisma desired has a large footprint in fracking and shale gas.
The FBI informant alluded to other bribes from China and Romania paid to the Bidens.
In summary, Congress was moving to hold Director Wray of the FBI in contempt for protecting Biden’s corruption. In exchange for favorable treatment, the FBI released information damaging to the Bidens. The vote on Wray was canceled. At the same time, Trump was reindicted over the Mar-A-Lago documents.
One sees that blackmail and bribery have become standard operating procedures in Washington.
Refuedalization
Wealth is being concentrated at an astonishing rate. Twenty years ago, 500 billionaires controlled 50% of the world’s wealth. Today, fewer than 100 control half the wealth. Centrally managing half of the planet requires the technocracy – the permanent expert class – to use tools and pull levers that crush any dissent threatening the concentration of power.
Most billionaires own pension and investment funds and control the world’s financial markets. In other words, they exercise control through access to credit and banking, direct investment, and the secret algorithm behind CEI and DEI scores.
Feudalism is an economic system concerned with the relationship between a lord and his vassals, with the vassals owing homage to the lord. The lord owns a fealty “in fee” as an absolute legal right to possession under an internationally recognized rule-based system. In turn, the lord has wardship over his possessions, including his serfs and their revenues. Should his vassals and serfs fail to pay, they enter forfeiture and lose their rights and possessions.
Feudalism depends on the “in fee” fealty (known as a fiefdom) and universality of the rules. There can be no escape for the vassal or serf. With modern mobility, this means that the entire planet must be under a single rule-based system, and noncompliant regions must be zoned off. North Korea is an example of a fiefdom protected by layers of barriers.
Failure to pay homage to the lord is a legal wrong and a state of sin. Dissent is not allowed, and those in a state of sin are profane and infidels and need ex-communication and banishment. They must be canceled.
Artificial Intelligence code is being written to find dissenters to be electronically banished. The WEF plans to unleash a summer of chaos in the United States. They did this with BLM and Antifa during the 2020 election cycle as part of the plan to cancel Trump the Profane.
Ever since the 1960s saw the incorporation of the Frankfurt School into universities, the move to restore feudalism has relied on Critical Race Theory and its basis on oppressor and oppressed (feudal lord and vassal).
The capture of the credentialed class into neo feudalism is nearly complete, as one notices when listening to propaganda radio stations such as NPR. Every cycle runs between racism, sexism, and gays with a rinse and repeat every 15 minutes. It is all modern lord and vassal propaganda.
They are not talking about freedom; they are driving a feudalism agenda.
Damn Dam
This past Tuesday, the Kakhovska Dam on the Dnieper River exploded at the same time as the start of Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russian forces. The dam is a near-perfect copy of Lock and Dam #8 on the Mississippi River in Genoa, Wisconsin. Both dams were built simultaneously, and both went on stream in 1957. Like much Soviet-era engineering, it is thought that the Soviets acquired construction plans from someone in the American government, the contractor, or the engineering company.
From the Wisconsin Dam, it is easy to see that the explosion in Ukraine occurred in the dam’s turbine room, deep within the structure. Just speaking as an engineer, the event would have required a semi-trailer worth of explosives to be moved into place with significant effort.
The iron and steel water control gates and the river navigation locks were not destroyed. The concrete core of the structure was blown apart, and it won’t be fixed for a long time.
No aircraft were observed over the dam or near the time of failure, and no defensive anti-aircraft fire occurred. No missiles were detected, nor any ships or boats came near enough. A torpedo attack would have impacted the reservoir side of the dam and not the turbine room.
The sudden failure flooded the region downstream, making conditions impossible for armor or trucks to move. The reservoir level fell quickly, exposing the muddy bottom and sides of the Dnieper River all the way up to the Donbas Region. Irrigation to 1 million acres of some of the world’s best farmland is now impossible and effectively removes the acreage from the global wheat basket.
So who did it? Who blew up the dam?
Russia immediately blamed Ukraine for being cruel and inhumane for committing such a massive war crime. Ukraine denies attacking the structure.
We know that the Ukrainian counteroffensive, as initially planned, required the dam to be captured intact from Russian forces so that heavy armor and logistical convoys could drive across the roadway on top of the dam. The dam was the primary river-crossing point for the Ukrainian military, while a second assault was to take place upstream, using amphibious vehicles and barges. Blowing the dam stopped both Ukrainian thrusts into Russian-occupied territory.
Blowing the dam as a tactic is known as hydraulic warfare, or the manipulation of rivers and swamps to bog down an opposing force.
Flooding below the dam is so severe, with thick gumbo-like mud everywhere, that contingency plans to push below the dam are now impossible to execute.
The amphibious assault was planned to split Russian forces, while the thrust over the dam was intended to block Russians from escaping via Crimea. If the dam had been captured intact, there was a strong expectation of capturing 50K or more Russian soldiers and kit, cutting off resupply, and REVERSING Russian gains from the past year and a half.
A third Ukrainian assault against Donbas was intended to block Russian logistics and possibly recover territory seized by Russia in 2014. Recovering Donbas would make China and the BRICS question the wisdom of supporting Putin.
Ukraine is maintaining operational security, and open sources are not yet detailing how Ukraine is attempting to adapt and overcome the loss of its two primary routes across the river. Russian authorities have photos of knocked-out Bradly Fighting Vehicles and German Leopard tanks on the internet. Whether these vehicles were trapped in a minefield, knocked out with artillery, or both is unclear.
Russia most likely blew up the dam, and it greatly impacted the Ukrainian counteroffensive. However it can be argued that the loss of 1 million acres denies the agricultural production to both sides. Blowing the dam, with its long-term consequences and short-term human tragedy, reflects Russian normative ethics and metaethics even though hydraulic warfare has already been used in this war by Ukraine.
The strongest argument that Russia blew the dam is based on the sheer mass of explosives and required access to the turbine room. The dam was well guarded by Russian troops as a critical infrastructure. Denying the dam to Ukraine freezes the Russian claim to land from the east to the Dnieper River. Air mobility over the River is not an option as the Ukraine airspace is the most contested airspace in world history.
Normative ethics dictate how Russia acts. In the case of the Kakhovska Dam, they behaved coldly and utilitarianly. Metaethics is defined as moral judgment’s nature, scope, and meaning.
The time has come to talk about metaethics and the philosophical changes being forced on the world through feudalization, A.I., and the vast power of state-driven propaganda.
Metaethics
Normative ethics and metaethics are the two main branches of ethical theory. Normative ethics are concerned with norms of thought and behavior and are typically broken into three classes:
- Teleological or consequentialism ethics focus on the ends, and the ends justify the means. Big finance is teleological, where the ends involve making money by any means possible. These systems require laws and regulations to prevent excesses. Neo-Fuedalism is also teleological, as is its stepchild -Big Wokism.
- Deontological or duty-honor ethics are principle-based and heavily centered on compliance. Before the expansion of the Frankfurt School, the United States and its institutions leaned towards duty ethics. The man in the grey flannel suit is an example of life under such a system, and America grew solid and prosperous when citizens were driven by obligation. But taken too far, such a system leads to misery as petty tyrants and dictators can emerge.
- Virtue ethics focuses on the content of one’s character and the character traits that allow an actor to choose between virtues and vices. The objective of life is not pleasure in a hedonistic sense but satisfaction from achievement and doing well in one’s life. A virtuoso playing the cello differs from a musician due to the character traits that drove her to be the best. Her life required hundreds of thousands of moral choices before she reached the pinnacle.
Metaethics is concerned with the nature—scope, and meaning of decisions. The masters of the universe, the titans behind cultural changes devouring the world, operate in the metaethical space. Metaethical theory is essential to understanding the world’s big power movers, yet it has been written out of the educational curriculums.
When one joins a secret society of some sort, the secret that binds is usually based on metaethics. The secret sauce that empowers multigenerational success and family happiness often distills down to metaethics. Metaethical errors drive the old riches to rags in three generations trope.
Metaethics is either Descriptive or Semantic. We all grew up in a world where descriptive metaethics dominated and applied to the three branches of normative ethics.
Many, however, reject Descriptive metaethics and follow the Semantic Word as revealed through Scripture.
Examples of people following Semantic ethical theory against the mainstream include Evangelical Christians, Orthodox Christians, the Amish, and Islamic Sunnis.
For the moment, let’s focus on Descriptive metaethics and get back to Semantical metaethics a bit later.
Descriptive metaethics divide into Objectivism and Relativism. Morality is discovered similar to the way in which mathematics and scientific laws are discovered when applying the branch of Descriptivism called Objectivism.
Note: A point of confusion exists because there is a difference between Objectivism with a capital “O” and objectivism with a lower case “o”. Ayn Rand’s insistence on using her own vocabulary created this problem.
The opposite happens under the branch called Relativism where moral laws are created to fit short term needs and not considered to be timeless or universal as they are under Objectivism. The laws of nations are created by legislative bodies as an example of applied Relativistic metaethics.
Objectivism itself is divided into Absolutism (as in Immanuel Kant’s), where immoral things like murder are always wrong, and lower case “o” objectivism (as in Ayn Rand’s), where obligations can conflict.
For example, under Objectivsm, it is always wrong to kill. But under lower case objectivsm, it is acceptable to kill in order to protect one’s own life. Self preservation ranks higher than the universal wrongness of killing.
Anither example: Ayn Rand wrote of John Galt withdrawing his motor from the world because it was his, and the world did not deserve the product of his mind without due compensation.
Lower case objectivism can be divided further into natural or non-natural categories. Suffering is an example of the natural, with natural objectivism organizing around the mission to minimize suffering.
Non-natural objectivism considers reason and rationality most critical. Actions are moral because they are reasoned to be good, whether they alleviate suffering or not.
The war in Ukraine is an example of non natural objectivism where the goal is to advance freedom instead of minimizing short term suffering.
Relativistic metaethics, the other main branch of Deterministic metaethics besides Objectivism, are created and not a product of the discovered universe. Relativism as a moral theory is the domain of the social construct and begs the question, created by whom?
Most of the angst occurring within modern leftists is due to their belief in Relativism instead of Objectivism. Their ethics are fabricated to meet the current narrative. This leads to madness and rage, and eventually nihilism.
If individuals invent Relativistic metaethics to suit their unique perspective, then these metaethics are subjective.
Subjective means that they are created to meet the individuals whims and desires.
For example: The gay marriage movement claiming relationships are subject to personal preference and private, and not subject to the broad rule of the government led the SCOTUS to allow gay marriage.
But then a shift occurred from subjection to conventionalism, the second type of relativistic metaethics where the ethics of a decision or situation are determined by the collective, group, or tribal affiliation.
The shift from subjectivism of the individualism to forced conventianism of the tribe occurred when gay marriage was pushed into the schools. Acceptance moved from being something private and became mandatory curriculum in public education.
Obama drove this, and Obama’s legacy will be the conversion of private subjective behaviors into forced tribal behaviors. He calls this process of conversion “community organizing.”
Conventionalism is where the LGBT, BLM, and extremist Islamic Fundamentalists create special rights for their unique tribes. The key to conventionalism is tribal affiliation.
When Middle America stood up to Anheuser-Busch and forced a $27 billion (and growing) loss, middle America stood up to conventionalist metaethics. Middle America accepts subjectivism but rejects conventionalism.
The kids running Anheiser-Busch marketing failed to distinguish subjectivism from conventionalism. The same is true at Target.
As marketing experts, the core job of the A-B marketing kindergarten required an understanding of metaethics Yet the marketing schools no longer teach the subject, and the kids are driving their employers to ruin.
A growing rage against special rules based on tribal affiliation (against conventionalism) is building in the United States population, and the consequences might lead to serious violence. Unfortunately, identity politics is the bread and butter of the political class. Big finance is now fully engaged in replacing Ibjectivism with Relativism, and within the domain of Relativism, they are stomping out subjectivism with the hammer and sickle of conventionalism.
A logical fallacy is behind the shift.
The transition from Objectivism, and especially the branch known as Kantian Absolutism, where wrong is wrong regardless of who knocks off the liquor store and murders the clerk, and towards Relativism and its sub branch of conventionalism tribalism, is seen when group affiliation of the perp matters more than wrongness done to a victim.
Conventionalism collapses towards absurdity as it pits all against all.
The very purpose of ethics, regardless of the flavor, is to establish how to act. But ethics dissolves into random urges and whims without the capacity to guide behavior as it moves from the universal to the tribal; hence, there are fewer ethics—and more chaos as conventionalism grows.
The planned WEF Summer of Chaos about to be released across America is well-named as it intends to be the final blow to Objectivist metaethics and the final dissolution of classical American society. Under conventionalist metaethics, the only thing that matters is Brand Affiliation. It is not hard to imagine why the brand managers over at Woke Inc. think this is a good idea.
Further, criticism is impossible under conventionalist metaethics, which is likely why organizations such as Target and Anheuser-Busch were so incredibly surprised when they crossed metaethical lines.
A lesson for leaders is to test and validate every candidate for metaethical understanding before hiring them to be a brand manager. An Ivy degree no longer assures knowledge of ethics or other classical subjects. Failure here can destroy mighty corporations.
We have been talking about Descriptivist metaethics and subclassifications. However, the rise of A.I. is causing a rapid and somewhat wild increase in Semantics, the other primary classification of metaethics.
Semantic metaethics are concerned with the payload, not the intent, and whether a proposition is right or wrong. Further, Semantics is concerned with agency and whether someone has the agency to decide upon a course of action.
Cognitivism is a subset of Semantics and is concerned with the truthfulness of a proposition, and the truth can be from different sources.
Stoicism, Hedonism, and Epicureanism are cognitive metaethics that find truth through natural sensations. Spiritualism, Scripturalism, and Divine Command find truth in propositions that transcend the natural world.
With the emergence of A.I., non-cognitive metaethics is going mainstream, and the world is not prepared to deal with ethical propositions based on statistical methods or the hidden viewpoints of a computer coder as the new source of truth.
Under the new metaethics, moral claims are prescriptive. Morality is whatever the darn machine says it is. There is no link to reality implied. This view of morality is as schizophrenic as the purely emotional person lacking the ability to separate internal feelings from the external reality.
Non cognitive, Semantic metaethics is the world of Artificial Intelligence. It’s a new form of mechanized schizophrenia on a global scale.
Artificial intelligence systems are assembled, and hence artificial. They are capable of making decisions based on discrete or probabilistic models. The ability to make decisions is why they are deemed to be intelligent.
However, they are not compelled to be truthful in the macro sense, as truth to a computer is limited to executing its internal code. All that matters is sensor input and code execution. The spell check on an iPhone does not care whether it makes a mistake. It just executes.
Agency involves decision rights. Who has the right to decide the value and correctness of a decision? Does a computer, government agent, corporation, or dictator have the moral right to determine where they bear no consequences?
When the world looks at Putin, it sees a system where only the leader and maybe his cadre have decision rights. The rest of the population executes instructions. Putin is said to have agency, whereas the Russian population does not. Russia is a compliance culture, and not an initiative culture because Russia forces Semantic metaethics on its population.
The war in Ukraine is about agency and decision rights in a big picture sense. The matter is so fundamental to the Ukrainian people that they have been willing to suffer the horrors of war rather than return to the political system that denied them the ability to live according to their beliefs. The war from the globalist perspective is about replacing Objectivist metaethics with either Western Relativism with its rainbow flags and avoiding an Imperial Russian Semantic system. Ukrainians want neither. They want Objectivism.
Objectivist metaethics are here to stay as they are based on universal truths, and hence globalism is doomed to fail. Objectivism is timeless. Those following Relativism are caught in a growing conflict with the Semantics that might lead to WWlll.
The globalist-Imperialist conflict distills down to whether truth is found in the conventionalism of tribal affiliation to George Floyd or in association with the Semantic central commands from Vlad Putin? The politicians and big finance are all-in with truth as conventionalist brand management.
A.I. aligns with Putin where truth is received and is whatever it must be today, for whatever reason. The conflict between the religious and A.I. is baked into the cake. This is clearly why Putin has wrapped himself in the cross. He understands that his forces are no match to Western A.I. as both Russian propaganda and A.I. operate in the Semantic domain.
For a decade or more, left wing propaganda has been emerging as a new religion of sorts and is no longer about let wing relativism. It’s about affiliation without any regard for truth. Deep fakes are changing everything, and without understanding how they fool people, they will be difficult to overcome. New technology is shifting the basis for the global political struggle from Descriptive to Semantic metaethics. The nature of the evil has changed its shape.
Mike Ryan is a chemical engineering consultant for Iron and Steel, Minerals, Heavy Chemicals, and Fibers Industries.