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Stephen Strum, MD, FACP's avatar

Relating to: The Emergency We Cannot Feel: On the Psychological Unreadiness for American Collapse.

Mike, your commentary goes beyond a 10-course dinner. It deserves, perhaps more pointedly, begging for a full-day roundtable discussion.

Some small points insofar as feedback.

"Constitutional crisis" has become hackneyed as has existential threat. The American public, perhaps others too, have a form of attention deficit. Perhaps it is a product of social media, or maybe it relates to fast-food as the new norm for many. We are in an age of McThought.

We are seeing violations of the US Constitution at an accelerated rate:

First Amendment- free speech; freedom of the press

Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments- the right to due process.

The Emoluments Clause: Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution (often called the Foreign Emoluments Clause) states:

"No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State."

Each of these violations is impeachable. Yet, the Republican GOP in the House & Senate are complicit in this offense to the nation.

You point out that Americans are unprepared for what is before them. Right. We are the Germans, the Germans of the 1930s in soon to be Nazi, Germany under the regime of Hitler.

Now, just replace "Germans" with Americans, and replace Hitler with Trump. Voila.

Mike, if the majority of Americans wish to live under the iron heel of Trump et al, then so be it. They will not eat cake, but stale bread or no bread.

The main issue, the only issue, does not lie in our understanding of the pathogenesis of our moral, civil, and political ennui, but in this:

WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO TO REMOVE TRUMP & FELLOW CONSTITUTIONAL VIOLATORS FROM POLITICAL OFFICE? WHAT STEPS SHOULD BE TAKEN NOW, OR ARE WE TOO LATE?

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ConnieDee's avatar

Fantastic article. The exposition on coherence and its collapse in four dimensions expands on and explicates a vague idea I woke up with last week.

My concern was the possibility of a deep metaphysical despair that we simply don't have the life tools to counteract. Our cultural framework of "America" and all that it includes (freedom, democracy, the genius behind the design of our government, the entire history of our culture including Greek and Roman ideas about democracy and Judeo-Christian ideas about mercy and kindness, the legacy of British common law, and all the rest) is dissolving before our eyes. We need a lot more than "grief counseling."

I brought up the idea in a lunch group of fellow philosophy alumni the same day. At least one person responded in a way that made me think his clear-sighted resistance to denial has put him into a pretty gloomy spot. As for me, if I'm not out on the trails at least three times a week I start sinking. And so I've been wondering whether it's possible that even those of us who are essentially mentally healthy and savvy about life's troubles can be undermined by the erosion of the moral and narrative coherences that have up until now constituted the "civil religion" of our culture.

Mike's essay looks at the forms of denial many are adopting. I'm pretty well armed against all of these since my life circumstances are secure: my problem is what exactly should I be doing to resist? All I have to offer are thinking and reading, which result in ideas and encouragement to my tiny audience on Reddit, Substack [comments] and Facebook.

I'll be passing on the concepts that Mike has explicated here. The more we can recognize and explicate how our collective thinking is being influenced, the more we can redirect it towards finding effective, courageous responses. (BTW, a better link to the book by Bernard Williams is here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5601.Truth_and_Truthfulness)

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