BEWARE OF TECHIES WITH TOO MUCH TIME ON THEIR HANDS.

In the days of wooden-hulled sailboats, driven by hundreds of yards of stout canvas, there was an insult given to new crewmembers who stood in the waist of the boat and pontificated on how things could be done better, things they new little about.. They were called "waisters". It was usually accompanied with a more direct epithet, typical of the sailors direct way of speaking. Even today there is little time on a sailboat for idleness. The captain, like Ahab, is "god over all of the vessel". Philosophy students are confronted with a conundrum: if you would not let a passenger on a cruise ship, who knows little of the complex web of things an experienced seaman knows, become Captain, why would you allow people to vote for a president who doesn't know how the ship of state works? How even more stupid to allow people who don't know how government works to vote for a group who knows enough about democracy to tear it down in front of us, but not enough to preserve it. We have voted like this all of our history because it is written in our Constitution that all citizens have that right, (exigencies of democracy made us become more inclusive). We have seen with MAGA why this question is persuasive.   Many of our presidents did not live up to our highest democratic principles. From a more recent one-term president who refuses to whole-heartedly admit he lost the 2020 election and believes he deserves a Mulligan, through George W Bush, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, back through history to Andrew Jackson, and more. But until the most recent example, the president was careful enough to pick well-qualified people to advise him in the duties to assist the president in running the ship of State without running on to the reef-of-state. And he was humble enough to listen to them. There is also a legislative branch to provide guidance and a judicial branch to pass judgement for the ages. Or at least that is what used to be.

 What is emerging from the dark cave of the most recent president; the waister with the big waist and tiny hands, are people of a well-cultivated intelligence who arrogantly believe that they are the only people qualified to drive the ship. They believe that we must tear down the ship of state and rebuild it with one of their design. All while driving through the storms that have arisen on our journey. Storms that the very people who would capture the vessel could have mitigated by admitting the science of climate change, or what democratic norms and customs to preserve. Like the captain of a trading vessel, they want dictatorial powers. They are captain Ahab without Starbuck (not the coffee).

These people call their belief a philosophy, maybe it is, not all philosophies are for the ages.  Among the ideas they unashamedly advance are anti-egalitarianism and anti-democracy. This is very close to Ayn Rand and her hostility to altruism. Rand called her philosophy Objectivism, though we can argue on the degree of objectiveness. The fat (and fatuous) candidate who wishes to be appointed captain so he can take over the vessel for the people who put him there, wishes to be President in a post-Constitutional state. He wishes to be a unitary executive. How do we translate these words which  don't just  lack  wisdom, but are an existential threat to all we have sought to preserve for nearly 250 years? We could, like MAGA, assume that this man is merely using metaphor sloppily. But do they know how to define metaphor ? Has he given us any indications that he understands the artful usage of words? Many of us worry about these nuances. His VP nominee offers a suggestion which frightens us even more. He wants us to get over our "dictator-phobia", as if there have been no dictators who gave us a reason not to have phobias. 

We know that there are many in that party eager to join this mutiny. To join these two men on the bridge, to be dictators of the ship of state. There is one fellow who nobody outside of the dictator admirers knows.  A fellow who, with no sense of irony, describes his philosophy as "anti-egalitarian" and "anti democratic". This fellow, Curtis Yarvin, leads a group called "The Dark Enlightenment". We can speculate on the practicality of a Dark Enlightenment, but the two words seem to some of us to be working at cross purposes. This man, Yarbin, also goes by the name, Mencius Mohbug-possibly a gamer identity. Do we want a LARPER running the country? Especially a gamer who is actively trying to weaken democracy because, in his opinion, democracy has failed. Autocracy seems to him, we May assume, to be filled with great success. Or so it seems. 

Not every democratically-elected leader lives up to his  potential. Untxi recently he was a he, that May be changing. We have many examples in our nearly 250 years. Yet, only when outside pressure groups with billions of dollars of dark money, started focusing on all three branches of government, did these weakness become so stark. But at least they were democratically-elected. And there were the other two branches to restrain them. We no longer have that assurance.