The Age of "W"eason ... a Pa(R)adigm Shift

If the old political paradigm could be said to have been between right and left, at least there was a commensurability, in that left and right shared common standards of reason and facticity. The 'new political reality' is marked by an incommensurability, in that there are no longer shared standards for establishing what is real. There is a 'new schism' about what constitutes a fact and how one establishes facticity.

For example, if one were to use Bolten's recent "W"easoning, justifying attacking Iran, this disconnect from the 'old way of thinking', is quite 'evident' ...


The fact that intelligence about Iran's nuclear activity was partial should not be used as an excuse not to act, Mr Bolton insisted.

Evidence is no longer the measure against which one might check the congruity of one's thinking, with the object of its thought.

What is the 'new criterion' for 'new facticity', according to Bolton

"Intelligence can be wrong in more than one direction." He asked how the British government would respond if terrorists exploded a nuclear device at home. "'It's only Manchester?' ... Responding after they're used is unacceptable."

Clearly when establishing validity, the 'new criterion' is 'fea(R) itself' ...

If you can imagine it, then it could be true. That possibility alone supplants the old measure of 'empirically, verifiable' evidence, or its more common cousin, 'probability'. For Bolton, this 'new imagined threat' is sufficient to justify its existence ... Or, in the old parlance, for the NEED to act AS IF it were true. In the 'new pa(R)adigm', the 'imagined' is now more valid than the 'empirical'.

What then might I ask, is the difference between Superstition and Bolton's 'imagined threat', except the tools to attack upon an imagined evil? More worrisome, and from the old paradigm's perspective, 'What is the difference between a 'paranoid delusional threat' and 'Bolton's imaginings' ... again except the available tools to act upon those 'imaginings'?'

Snerd