tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28676316.post3631256890581057610..comments2024-03-29T05:25:04.962-04:00Comments on Moristotle & Co.: The astonishing appeal of candidate TrumpUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28676316.post-67777172755668047372017-05-23T20:39:29.352-04:002017-05-23T20:39:29.352-04:00Chuck, I too have thought about being “divided fro...Chuck, I too have thought about being “divided from nearly half of my compatriots,” but I don’t see any possibility of coming together with people who are alienated from a fantasy. However, I think (or hope) that events are going to shake enough of them into seeing the error of voting for a fantasist that they will be overruled by more realistic voters the next time. The question then will be whether the resulting leaders of our government will govern more equitably, more fairly. David Brooks’s article in today’s <i>NY Times</i>, “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/23/opinion/alienated-mind-trump-supporters.html”>The Alienated Mind</a>,” bears on this:<br /><br />Alienation, the sociologist Robert Nisbet wrote, is a “state of mind that can find a social order remote, incomprehensible or fraudulent; beyond real hope or desire; inviting apathy, boredom, or even hostility.”<br /> The alienated long for something that will smash the system or change their situation, but they have no actual plan or any means to deliver it. The alienated are a hodgepodge of disparate groups. They have no positive agenda beyond the sort of fake shiny objects Trump ran on (Build a Wall!). They offer up no governing class competent enough to get things done.<br /> As Yuval Levin argues in a brilliant essay in Modern Age, “Alienation can sometimes make for a powerful organizing principle for an <i>electoral</i> coalition.…But it does not make for a natural organizing principle for a <i>governing</i> coalition.<br /> Worse, alienation breeds a distrust that corrodes any collective effort. To be “woke” in the alienated culture is to embrace the most cynical interpretation of every situation, to assume bad intent in every actor, to imagine the conspiratorial malevolence of your foes.<br /> Alienation breeds a hysterical public conversation. Its public intellectuals are addicted to overstatement, sloppiness, pessimism, and despair. They are self-indulgent and self-lionizing prophets of doom who use formulations like “the Flight 93 election” — who speak of every problem as if it were the apocalypse....<br /> The events of the past four months illustrate that we do need a political establishment in this country, or maybe a few competing establishments. We need people who have been educated to actually know something about public policy problems. We need people who have had gradual, upward careers in government and understand the craft of wielding power. We need people who know how to live up to certain standards of integrity and public service.<br /> But going forward we need a better establishment, one attuned to Trump voters, those whose alienation grows out of genuine suffering.Moristotlehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02211602374384087074noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28676316.post-66982060937744882572017-05-23T16:18:28.674-04:002017-05-23T16:18:28.674-04:00Thanks, Eric. "I don't want to feel divid...Thanks, Eric. "I don't want to feel divided from nearly half of my compatriots" is what I started out trying to say. And failed. I've been trying to understand this through books about "confirmation bias", tribalism, and other failures of rationality - which I, of course, also commit.<br /> The thing is, though...we at least recognize these as failures, and struggle to do better. I fear that many don't even see them as failures. They are proud of their certainty on matters they know little about. It is this that makes me wonder if democracy is viable.<br />No, I think an enlightened despot, or even an enilightened Mechanical Turk, is even less likely to work.Chucknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28676316.post-54352024312143209272017-05-22T21:50:59.562-04:002017-05-22T21:50:59.562-04:00Thank you, Chuck & Eric, for unloading your an...Thank you, Chuck & Eric, for unloading your anger (in Chuck’s case), your doubts, your dream (in Eric’s case). <br /> Yes, Chuck, those voters who voted for Trump....I wrote nine paragraphs devoted to that many of [all of] the Trump characteristics that a voter would need to identify with in order to give Trump a pass. But even though I admitted to having a bit of each characteristic myself, I could not give Trump a pass on any one of them, let alone all or most of them. (Of course, it is highly likely that most voters in Trump’s camp weren’t aware of all nine, or even most, of the characteristics, partly because they exercised the Trump characteristic of believing only what they <i>want</i> to believe.)<br /> Eric, your sketch of an enlightened monarch evoked for me philosopher John Rawls’s theory of justice (as fairness), with its “original position,” in which legislators legislated without regard to the effect of the laws on themselves personally. That’s my quick layman’s summary. Here are three paragraphs from the Wikipedia article on it:<br /><br />“The original position (OP) is a hypothetical situation developed by American philosopherJohn Rawls as a thought experiment to replace the imagery of a savage state of nature of prior political philosophers like Thomas Hobbes. In the original position, the parties select principles that will determine the basic structure of the society they will live in. This choice is made from behind a veil of ignorance, which would deprive participants of information about their particular characteristics: his or her ethnicity, social status, gender and, crucially, Conception of the Good (an individual's idea of how to lead a good life). This forces participants to select principles impartially and rationally.<br /> “In social contract theory, persons in the state of nature agree to the provisions of a contract that defines the basic rights and duties of citizens in a civil society. In Rawls's theory, Justice as Fairness, the original position plays the role that the state of nature does in the classical social contract tradition of Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Locke. The original position figures prominently in his 1971 book, A Theory of Justice. It has influenced a variety of thinkers from a broad spectrum of philosophical orientations.<br /> “As a thought experiment, the original position is a hypothetical position designed to accurately reflect what principles of justice would be manifest in a society premised on free and fair cooperation between citizens, including respect for liberty, and an interest in reciprocity.”Moristotlehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02211602374384087074noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28676316.post-42347747721240810892017-05-22T19:05:46.614-04:002017-05-22T19:05:46.614-04:00You are absolutely right, Morris, that we each hav...You are absolutely right, Morris, that we each have a little bit of Trump in us. That bit is called our "inner five-year-old," the person we were back when we were each the center of our own little universe. The vast majority of people grow past that phase. A few don't. CNN has voiced some interesting observations on the impacts of a five-year-old president. As for how this child got elected, I have been trying to understand that. I don't want to feel divided from nearly half of my compatriots. To that end, I have been reading "Hillbilly Elegy" by J.D. Vance. He is a sweet man telling a sweet story about breaking out of the limited horizons of his demographic. It has not produced the epiphanies I had hoped for, however, although Vance is more enlightening than, say, Ann Coulter. As for the future of democracy, I hope it is finished. In a democratic society, people only vote for their individual self-interests. We will never get anywhere with that system. We need to return to the concept of an enlightened monarch. True, it's impossible to find a human being who can live up to the requirements of that job description, and life expectancy limits even the best candidates to only a decade or two. But that's where artificial intelligence comes in: we can now fabricate the ideal monarch who will be a pleasant balance of innovative and conservative agendas, be programmed to respect all races, genders, religions, cultures, ages and orientations, and live forever. All that the rest of us will have to do is obey. It's a sad sign that this actually seems better to me than the current political situation we're in. The only long-shot hope I have is that Trump continues to irritate and derail his own GOP colleagues until the end of 2018 (but not enough to be impeached), and that Pence is found guilty of enough lies and/or other crimes to be prosecuted (but not before 2019), and that the Democrats take back the house in 2018, and that sometime in January or March of 2019, Trump is impeached the same day that Pence is prosecuted and Nancy Pelosi automatically becomes President. A bit of a stretch, but my inner five-year-old needs a dream too.Eric Meubnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28676316.post-27807153611541889412017-05-22T12:23:01.130-04:002017-05-22T12:23:01.130-04:00I wish I could agree with all this. I feel, thoug...I wish I could agree with all this. I feel, though, that Trump is such a dispicable character that I hope he is reading what the NYT columnist say, and taking it to heart. Yes, I am vindictive. There are some people so vicious, so destructive, that forgiveness is morally wrong.<br />The Trump voters are a different sort of problem. Some of them doubtless did so because they are as bigoted and as ignorant as he is, but I can't (and don't want to) believe that of most of them. That, though, leaves questions I just can't answer. Trump has been in the public eye for decades, and throughout it has been obvious to many of us that he was mentally and morally unfit for public office of any kind. How did all of these people miss that? Many of them are by no means stupid. How did they so catastrophically decieve themselves? And, given that so many are capable of such terrible error, what hope is there for democracy?Chucknoreply@blogger.com