The Beginning of the End

Let me express a bit of frustration.  On the one hand, the Times recently ran an editorial "Are Liberals Helping Trump?" which basically reiterated claims that the sanctimonious snobbery on the left is alienating centrists who lean slightly right.  On the other hand, the Post ran article "Trump Supporters See a Successful President," which basically echoes claims I have heard many times from people about town here in red Idaho.  They lament that liberals demonstrate such "hatred for the man,” and "just don’t get it.”  They go on to say, liberals should "Shut their mouths and let the man do what he’s got to do. We all shut our mouths when Obama got in the second time around, okay? So that’s what really needs to be done.”  Of course, no one on the right "shut their mouths" during the Obama administration.  Hyper conservative talk radio and Fox News couldn't get through a ten minute segment without denigrating the president, and their surprise that what goes round comes round seems equally sanctimonious and disingenuous.

The difficulty runs deeper, and is the cause of my frustration.  Let me cite an example.  On a fishing trip, the topic of "climate change" came up, in part because the road up to an Alpine lake was still closed even though the snow had long since melted off.  We went back and forth a bit, along the standard Fox News/MSNBC divide.  He denied that there was even a reality, to which I replied that there was a pretty clear "scientific consensus" that it was a reality and that it was mostly man made.  He denied the "scientific consensus" with the apparent assumption that any disagreement was complete disagreement, and went on to say "if you believe in the Bible at all ..."  I interrupted him, and just said, "please, no religion."  The tension in the truck had become palpable, and that was the last fishing trip we took together.  The remark, however, has stayed with me, and I have been puzzling over it for some time, as many of my previous posts have demonstrated.  I have come to the conclusion that George Lakoff is right in one sense, that we have different "frames" for our arguments, but they go deeper than the metaphors surrounding the "strict father" and "nurturant parents."  Although the cultural metaphors that surround the "strict father" and "nurturant parent" do illustrate surprisingly well the impasse between conservative and liberals, I won't reiterate the whole of his argument, but send you instead to his little book, don't think of an elephant.  From my perspective, the two frames, and the divisive culture war that goes with it, more resembles the two cultures outlined in the late 50s by C. P. Snow.  He suggested in The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, that the "intellectual life of the whole of western society" was divided between the sciences and the humanities.  A good deal of what he says rings true, or true enough to argue around the university campus, but for the political life of our country, there's not only science, but also secular humanism, which the conservative right finds equally disturbing.  I would recast it as "secular rationalism" vs. "religious authoritarianism," my reasons outlined below.  

Secular Rationalism

Both the Times and the Post articles referenced at the beginning of this post are written by people who are essentially "secular rationalists."  A secular rationalist would believe that there is a "problem," the parameters of which can be delineated and defined, and a solution found.  For the Times writer, the problem resides in the way liberals "talk to" conservatives.  The latter feel "assaulted by what [conservatives describe as] a kind of moral Bolshevism — the belief that the liberal vision for the country was the only right one," and "disagreeing meant being publicly shamed."  She makes essentially the same point that Lakoff made.  While liberals may never win over die hard conservatives, those in the middle leaning right, might be won over if different modes of discourse could be found, something a bit less condescending.  Moreover, a secular rationalist would believe that the delineation and definition of a problem resides in "verifiable facts."  For the Post writers, the article is for the most part simply illustrative of Trump supporters and their beliefs, but when discussing Trump's roll back of an Obama era regulation "that would have restricted coal mines from dumping debris in nearby streams," they couldn't help but provide a "corrective" to the Trumpist's belief that it would give coal miners "their jobs back."  They write, "the regulation actually would have cost relatively few mining jobs and would have created nearly as many new jobs on the regulatory side, according to a government report — an example of the frequent distance between Trump’s rhetoric, which many of his supporters wholeheartedly believe, and verifiable facts."  One can imagine them writing, "WTF is wrong with them?" then backspacing over it with the delete tab.  The liberal frustration is not so much a moral Bolshevism, but more an utter incredulity at a stance that precludes any form of rational argument.   I said to my friend, "please! no religion" -- and yes, I'm sure my tone was abrupt, even imperious -- because I knew that, at that juncture, the discussion was over.

The problem was not so much the rational part of secular rationalism, but rather the secular part.  My friend was being perfectly rational and was about to give contradictory evidence drawn from scripture.  From his point of view, where the revealed word of god is unquestionably true, he would even feel that his evidence trumped my evidence, since mine was predicated on fallible human observation.  The secular rationalist does not so much dismiss religion outright, but sees it as irrelevant within certain contexts.  When engaged in technical problems -- e.g. fixing a plumbing leak -- one simply does not ask, "how would god want me to proceed?" and subsequently flip through scripture to find the answer.  To do so seems at best absurd, at worst dangerous.  The difficulty, of course, goes one step further.  What is not a "technical problem?"  The secular rationalist would see climate change, not as a moral problem, but rather a technical problem amenable to a technical solution.  They would see gun violence, not as a moral problem, but as a "technical problem" amenable to a technical solution.   The list goes on.  If morality enters the picture, it does so "after the fact" once the problem has been identified and recognized as a problem.  This is particularly true of problems that endanger the physical health and material well being of people.  The failure to recognize the problem and address it with solutions to alleviate or at least diminish its dilatory effects on people, is immoral.  To the secular rationalist, there is an ever widening range of problems to be delineated, defined, and addressed.  I find myself thinking, "WTF is wrong with them?" on the assumption that the willful ignorance of the problem and the stubborn refusal to address it have other motives that trump a moral response -- e.g. profits for the fossil fuel and gun industries.    

Democracy or "republicanism" in the way the founders would have understood "republicanism," is contingent upon a secular rationalist point of view -- that is to say, maintaining a distinction between the technical issues of governance and religion.  One such technical problem was religion itself.  While it is true that many of the founders were men of faith, specifically christian faith, they were also men for whom the various schisms within the christian faith had more portentous consequence,  The dislocations and the violence of the reformation were not as distant as they are today, and the colonies were populated with various sects who had fled Europe, seeking a place where they were free to practice their religion in their own manner free from the hegemony of a state sanctioned religion.  The establishment clause, at least initially, was a "limited government" solution -- that is to say, by prohibiting the establishment of a state sanctioned religion, they hoped to avoid an authoritarian (at the time monarchical) hegemony over religious practice.  Washington and Adams, both committed christians, took a somewhat ecumenical view of christianity.  In their leadership roles, they attended various church services, to include catholic services, and Washington's celebrated letter to the jewish community of Newport extends religious tolerance beyond even the various sectarian boundaries of christianity.  The establishment clause was an imminently practical solution to the thorny technical problem of creating a single government within a region of deeply committed religious diversity.  There is a moral imperative -- the reciprocal duty of toleration -- but it is a posteriori.  It is necessary to making the solution to the particular problem of religious diversity work. 

For the secular rationalist, the question, "what is not a technical problem?" is non-sensical.  All problems are technical problems amenable to technical solutions.  Consider, for example, the issue of abortion.  It is cast as a moral issue first and foremost, and many evangelicals voted for Trump, despite a host of other reservations, on that single issue alone.  He opposed abortion.  For the secular rationalist, the Roe v. Wade decision is similar to the establishment clause.  It is a "limited government" solution to a rather thorny problem of failed consensus.   It does not "impose" the positive act of abortion, nor for that matter does it "impose" the negative act of refraining from abortion, but it simply allows women to act on their individual morality.  There are definitional issues -- at what point, for example, does abortion become infanticide? -- but for the secular rationalist, those questions present technical problems with technical solutions based on observable evidence.  The definitional question, for example, could be decided on "viability" -- that is to say, when the fetus would be "viable" outside the womb -- at which point abortion becomes infanticide and then by definition illegal and immoral.  The definitional question could be decided on "term" -- that is to say, when the fetus reaches the second trimester -- at which point abortion becomes infanticide and then by definition illegal and consequently immoral.   Here again, however, the definition is technical and any morality is implicit in the solution to the problem.  Nevertheless, if one believes life begins at conception, if one believes that all abortion is infanticide, one is free to act on that belief and refrain from abortion, even in the case of an unwanted pregnancy resulting from rape or incest.  For the secular rationalist, Roe v. Wade seems an imminent practical solution to a particularly thorny problem of a failed consensus.  Here again, there is a moral imperative necessary to making the solution work -- the reciprocal duty of toleration.  

On YouTube, there are a number of videos of Neil Degrasse Tyson refuting what is called the "god of the gaps."  It asserts, as a proof of divinity, that there are things that science cannot explain and, consequently, must be of divine origin.   As a secular rationalist, Tyson admits that there are things that science cannot explain, but adds the caveat "yet."  As just a matter of observation, it seems reasonably clear that we can explain more today than 100 years ago, and that a "scientific" understanding is "advancing."  There are fewer and fewer things that science cannot explain and, consequently, god is an ever diminishing figure that will, at some point, simply vanish.  When I suggested above that the secular rationalist sees religion as irrelevant in certain contexts, I doubt that even the most committed evangelical would consult his bible to determine why his computer crashed.  He would want to consult an "expert," or at least someone with technical expertise, who would fix the problem or declare the computer broke beyond repair.  Only the most committed evangelical would consult his bible to determine why he was experiencing an excruciating headache and trust in prayer to alleviate it.  He would want to consult an "expert," who would diagnose and fix the problem.  If he couldn't?  Then and only then would he capitulate to the god of the gaps, and say place his cure in god's hands.   The difficulty, of course, is that we live in an expanding and ever-more complex web of "experts."  I have been reading biographies of the founders lately and it struck me that, in their day, it was possible for a literate human with some curiosity to acquire the full range of human knowledge in multiple domains of expertise.  Try doing so today.  As god's domain contracts to ever narrower cracks in human knowledge, at the same time the expertise of the expert grows ever more esoteric and remote from common knowledge.  Their expertise becomes, as it were, a matter of faith, for many indistinguishable from religious faith, and the expert, the technocrat, something of a high priest of the faith, demanding submission to what he knows to be true, and expressing incredulous surprise when his truth is rejected.  Consider, for example, the tone of the Times editorial board, when they write "countless studies show that vaccines are safe and effective — more than 350 health groups compiled a list for Mr. Trump — but they haven’t penetrated the reality distortion field created by Mr. Kennedy and his fellow travelers."   

It is perhaps not surprising that the democratic party, increasingly aligned with secular rationalism, has also become the party of the well-educated "technocrat."  Speaking for myself, as a well educated human being, it is relatively easy for me to place my faith in the expertise of the expert.  Although I am far from an expert in all fields, I know how they acquired their expertise and am reasonably confident that, had I developed an interest in their field of knowledge, I would have been able to develop the expertise of an expert in that field.  While the expertise of the expert is far from infallible, I do have some faith in the progressive nature of that expertise.  If time travel were a possibility, I would not send myself back to the time of Washington to have my dental work done.  If anything, though I have no idea what the future portends, given the opportunity, as a matter of faith, I would send myself into the future on the assumption that dental technology had advanced.  What happens, however, when the expertise of the expert fails? when they get it wrong?  Here again, speaking for myself, as a well educated human being, I do not abandon my faith.  It is relatively easy for me to shrug it off, in part because I understand that "getting it wrong" is part of the progressive expansion of knowledge.  There are things we know with great certainty, other things (many things!) we don't know, and we fill those gaps with educated guesses.  Sometimes we get it right, sometimes we get it wrong, but both success and failure contribute to the learning curve.  Given a failure, we at least now know what NOT to do, and next time we will make another educated guess and try something slightly different.

Finally, for the rational secularist, political power is (or ought to be) limited in two ways.  First, and perhaps most significantly, it ought to be limited to the solution of problems.  The politicians, however, don't get to decide what is (and what is not) a problem.  Ostensibly the people decide, but increasingly the experts decide on behalf of the people -- scientia ipsa potent est -- and here again this is particularly true of problems that endanger their physical health and material well being.  Some problems or issues are more clear cut than others, and for those that do not have obvious and intuitive solutions, there is plenty of room for disagreement on how best to solve the problem, even among the experts.   Second, the exercise of political power is (or ought to be) distributed.  Though important, I am not thinking about the checks and balances inherent to the American political system, but more generally.  Someone or some group may exercise considerable power within their field of expertise, but their power, as such, is limited to their field of expertise.  We do not call in medical experts to help us make business decisions, nor do we call in economists to help us make medical decisions, but it is clear enough that decisions in one field of expertise have an impact on the other. Think, for example of medical insurance.  A good business decision for the insurance industry ( e.g. mandatory insurance coverage, which expands the risk pool) has an unequal impact between younger and older adults.  A good medical solution (covering pre-existing conditions) can be a bad business decision.  Here again, there is plenty of room for disagreement, even between experts, but in either case disagreement is not only expected, but encouraged, insofar as open debate more often than not leads to better and more comprehensive solutions.

Religious Authoritarianism

I have to admit that I am not attuned to the discourse flowing from the conservative right, but there is a scene in the 1999 film, the Matrix, that serves as a metaphor.  The protagonist, Neo, is offered the choice between a blue and a red pill.  The blue pill allows him to stay in the matrix, living a comfortable, but illusory life.  The red pill allows him to escape from the matrix into a "true reality," even though it is a harsh and unremittingly hostile environment.  The religious authoritarian would have us "chew on the red pill." If one chews on the red pill of conservative media for any length of time, one does leave with the impression that the world is a dark and dangerous place, which includes even sinister supernatural forces.  The latest edition of Brietbart, for example, has a story about witches uniting to cast spells on Trump.  The spell, apparently, is "open source, and may be modified to fit your preferred spiritual practice or magical system,” and as they go on to describe it, "What is critical is “the simultaneity of the working” as well as “the mass energy of participants.”  It's interesting to note that the language of technology and science, or perhaps more precisely techno-babble and pseudo-science, enter into the witches cauldron insofar as their spell is "open source" and relies on "mass energy."but not to worry, however, because "a number of Christian groups and individuals have promised to pray for Mr. Trump, asking God’s blessings on his work and on the nation."  

I would like to say this is offered satirically, as something that one might also find in the Onion, but it seems devoid of both humor and irony.  It is offered simply as evidence of a manichaeistic view of the world where the forces of evil are constantly assaulting the forces of good, represented by Trump and Christianity.  Lakoff gets it right when he suggests that the conservative, red pill, world view begins with a set of assumptions.  As he put it,  somewhat annotated, "the world is a dangerous place, and it always will be, because there is evil out there in the world."  Moreover, "the world is difficult because it is competitive," not only with the forces of evil assaulting the good, but it is also a world of limited resources, and there are those who would take from you what is rightfully yours by force and by guile.  Consequently, "there will always be winners and losers."  The strong win, the weak lose, and because there is "an absolute right and an absolute wrong," the good must be strong in the face of evil.  If the secular rationalist sees a "problem" that must be solved, the religious authoritarian sees a contest that must (or MUST!) be won, with no quarter given.  

The rhetoric surrounding crime provides one case in point.  In Trump's inauguration speech, he said "the crime and the gangs and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now."  Writing from a secular rationalist point of view, the Post debunks the claim that we live in a dystopian wasteland, providing statistical evidence that murders may have ticked up slightly in several larger cities, particularly Chicago, but even the up-tick doesn't represent anything close to a crime wave nor does it reverse the "decades-long decline" [in violent crime] since the height of the crack cocaine epidemic in the early 1990s."  It's telling that Trump used the term, "inner cities," and the Post felt the need to provide a correction, saying "'Inner cities' is not a category by which crime is measured.  Trump seems to mean the largest and urban cities."  Actually, Trump did mean "inner city," and he was referencing not a set of facts, but the prevailing (principally rural) mythology that surrounds "inner cities" -- that they are the very heart of darkness, the modern equivalent of Sodom and Gomorrah.    

Likewise, the rhetoric surrounding crime and its link to immigration provides another case in point.  At the CPAC, Trump suggested, "These are bad dudes. We’re getting the bad ones out, okay? We’re getting the bad — if you watch these people, it’s like gee, that’s so sad. We’re getting bad people out of this country, people that shouldn’t be, whether it’s drugs or murder or other things. We’re getting bad ones out. Those are the ones that go first, and I said it from Day One."  Here again, however, the Post debunks the claim, suggesting "Trump takes credit for fulfilling his campaign promise of cracking down on illegal immigration, but these arrests are routine.  Immigration and Customs Enforcement has always targeted dangerous criminals in enforcement priorities."  Moreover, "25 percent of the arrests were of people who had lesser charges and noncriminal convictions. According to anecdotes of recent arrests, undocumented people with traffic violations were subject to arrest."  Hardly bad dudes, except insofar as these same immigrants take what rightly belongs to citizens -- jobs.  Of course, this too is subject to debunking, and Yahoo! News, also writing from a secular rationalist point of view, does so methodically.   Here again, however, the factual claims are irrelevant.   From a secular rationalist point of view, there really is no problem to be solved, and if there is, the current solutions seem to be working very well and need only minor tweaking.  From the religious authoritarian point of view, the crime and employment statistics are irrelevant.  Even if they were relevant, they would be seen as a blue pill deception to hide the red pill reality.  What counts, and what appeals, is the authoritarian stance -- the champion, on the white charger, who will bare his chest, raise his lance, penetrate the heart of darkness, and conquer the evil other.  

If the world is a dark and dangerous place -- a place where one needs a gun for self-protection, a place where (not to sound too much like a cartoon or video game) evil lurks around every corner in every shadowed face -- two virtues stand out above the rest -- strength and security.  The former, of course, provides the latter, and so, of the two, strength is the primary virtue.  This is not to say that the secular rationalist doesn't value strength, quite the contrary, but they view what it means to be strong differently.  For the secular rationalist, strength lies in the ability to solve problems, "real" problems, which implies a more nuanced and intellectual approach that looks for root causes and seeks the accommodation of a win-win.   If the recent up-tick in violent crime in Chicago is a problem, then one asks why it is happening in Chicago (and not in other cities) which requires a sifting through data, gathering various stakeholder views, eliminating spurious and misleading claims, et cetera.  Once one has a clear, evidence-based understanding of why it is happening, one can create appropriate solutions that might actually solve the problem.  Strength lies, not in individuals, per se, but rather multiple individuals working toward a systemic approach to the "problem."  Likewise, the religious authoritarian recognizes problems, but strength lies not so much in the ability to "solve" problems, but to "conquer" problems, which implies an application of force.  If the recent up-tick in violent crime is a problem, one declares a war on "the crime and gangs and drugs," hires more police and gives them greater freedom to apply force in order to free the people from the dark forces that threaten their security.  A leadership that projects strength can be forgiven a host of sins, particularly personal peccadilloes like playing grab ass, particularly if that same leadership promises his people security. 

Implicit to the religious authoritarian world view, one predicated on strength, are a number of dichotomous hierarchies.  It perhaps goes without saying that people rarely identify themselves and those like them as evil.  "We," so to speak, are always the good guys and "they" are the bad guys.  For what it's worth, such a view seems both human and intuitive, and no doubt stems from an evolutionary pre-history where the world was a dark and dangerous place.  It's not hard to imagine our distant ancestors huddled around the fire, fearful of the darkness and the others beyond the mouth of the cave.  I am not exactly calling the thought process primitive, but rather suggesting that a strong identification with and collaboration within the tribe is deeply ingrained and has been conducive to survival.  Consequently, the sort of accommodation necessary to "win-win" might be permissible within the tribe, but with those outside the tribe it can be seen as both perverse and counter-intuitive, a sign of betrayal and submissive weakness, particularly so when the tribe is clearly "stronger" and should dominate the other.  "We," after all, are the good guys and "they" are the bad guys, and so it is absolutely fitting and proper that good should dominate evil.  If the world, god forbid, should be turned topsy-turvey, it is equally fitting and proper that the good should resist a dominant evil.  A good deal of the Tanakh and much of the New Testament plays out this archetype, the good resisting the dominant evil whether the Egyptians of Exodus, or the Rome of the gospels, and perhaps its not surprising that the founding myth of the American history is biblical in this archetypal sense, insofar as we freed ourselves from the dominant British empire.  Likewise, perhaps its not surprising that advances in liberty are likewise biblical in this archetypal sense -- think, for example, of the civil rights movement and the extent to which they drew on the imagery of Exodus -- think, for example, of the tea party movement and the extent to which they drew on the imagery of the founding myths of American history -- think, for example, of the so-called Trump movement and how he will redeem American weakness, make us great again, and return us to our rightful dominance.

Andrew Bacevich, who seems so often to beat me to punch and should be more widely read, quotes the NY Times columnist David Brooks, who writes:

America [has] impressive historical roots, a spiritual connection to the centuries. And it assigned a specific historic role to America as the latest successor to Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome. In the procession of civilization, certain nations rise up to make extraordinary contributions... At the dawn of the 20th century, America was to take its turn at global supremacy.  It was America's task to take the grandeur of past civilizations, modernize it, and democratize it.  This common destiny would unify diverse Americans and give them a great national purpose.

It is drawn from his book, A Return to National Greatness, which should, of course, sound familiar.  According to Bacevich, Brooks belief that "America culminates history," and "advances a way of life and a democratic model that will provide people everywhere with dignity" is the core tenant of faith in the Church of America the Redeemer.  It is, moreover, an evangelical faith, dedicated to proselytism through strength, justified because "the things Americans do are not for themselves only, but for all mankind."  A good deal follows from this, and I won't recapitulate Bacevich's entire argument, except to say that he writes from a secular rational point of view, countering Brook's faith-based arguments with his own evidence-based arguments.  He notes that "anyone daring to disagree with that proposition they denounced as craven or cowardly," particularly those who opposed American proselytism through strength.  Brooks, he notes,  "disparaged those opposing the war [in Iraq]  as mere 'marchers.'  They were effete, pretentious, ineffective, and absurd."  Moreover, not unlike those who were apostates to the faith in the Vietnam era, those mere marchers undermined American strength, leading to a variety of "humiliations."  To which Bacevich responds with considerable evidence that the faith might be so much hooey, writing "here in any event is a brief inventory of what that euphemism conceals: thousands of Americans needlessly killed; tens of thousands grievously wounded in body or spirit; trillions of dollars wasted; millions of Iraqis dead, injured, or displaced; this nation’s moral standing compromised by its resort to torture, kidnapping, assassination, and other perversions; a region thrown into chaos and threatened by radical terrorist entities like the Islamic State that U.S. military actions helped foster."  Adding, "and now, if only as an oblique second-order bonus, we have Donald Trump’s elevation to the presidency to boot," the one who ostensibly demonstrates the strength not only to redeem our weaknesses, restore the faith, and raise us again to "global supremacy" like a phoenix rising with the mushroom cloud.  

Irreconcilable

Ultimately, the religious authoritarian and secular rationalist world views are irreconcilable.  Within the popularized version of Hegelian philosophy, I know of course that there should be a thesis, antithesis, which eventually produces a synthesis.  At the risk of sounding my own either/or note, I do not see a synthesis between the religious authoritarian thesis, which has a deeper and more intransigent history, and the secular rationalism antithesis.  The values are asymmetrical and irreconcilable.   Secular rationalism sees problems, and at the moment, according to Gallup, the problem most cited by the people of the US is "dissatisfaction with government," along with "unifying the country," on the presumption that fixing the government would help unify the country once again.  The secular rationalist would ask the second order questions, what are the causes of "dissatisfaction with government," and seek to remedy those causes. Is it government's apparent inability to resolve health care issues?  Is it government's apparent inability to resolve immigration or civil rights issues?  The list is long, but not too long, and for the secular rationalist, it seems inconceivable and immoral that men and women of good will cannot sit down together and hash out solutions that would accommodate opposing points of view, bring people together, and help rebuild confidence in government.  If the car isn't running properly, one fixes the car.  If the government isn't running properly, one fixes the government, and the solutions will be systemic and, well, bureaucratically technical.  The religious authoritarian, however, already knows the solution to the problem, and its obvious.  If the government is ineffectual, it suffers from weakness at the top.  The forces of evil are advancing, and the leadership lacks either the strength or the conviction to stop it.  Strength is important, but strength without conviction is simply tyranny, and so too those in authority, if they are to be worthy of the people's faith, must represent the one true faith, the manifest destiny, a vision of America first and greatest among nations.  A strong leader would unify the people behind the banner of a great national purpose, and while dissenters and deserters are to be expected, a strong leader would tolerate no dissent and no desertion.

Conservative trolls are right in one respect.   Religious authoritarian thought is anathema to liberals, and when confronted with it, they do tend to get all a flutter, which reinforces the impression of whiney weakness and abject dependency on the administrative state.   Trump, ultimately, however, is not so much a conservative, as a religious authoritarian.  He has used the archetypes of evangelical christianity to present himself as a messianic leader, the strongest of the strong, and so it is not surprising to read that he intends to enhance military spending by $54 billion, while cutting domestic programs "relating to education, the environment, science and poverty."  It probably goes without saying, but I have seen no analysis that suggests we face external threats meriting budgetary increases that would make the strongest military on earth even stronger.  Even assuming that the $54 billion would be better spent on defense hardware than social programs, that leaves the promised infrastructure in abeyance -- the work on, say, bridges that carry people back and forth to work -- or, perhaps, repairs to aging dams on the verge of collapse.  The list could go on, but his budgetary proposal is a clear prioritization of strength.  Along with cancellation of trade and environmental agreements, it signals the prioritization not of an international order, but the emergence of an American imperium, an America seeking military hegemony and a willingness to use force to assert global supremacy. It might seem impertinent to ask, but I do wonder along with Michael Moore who we will invade next?  That, of course, appeals to conservatives, but it leaves in place the abject dependency on the bureaucratic state.  As the Times reports, true conservatives would point out that "taming the budget deficit without tax increases would require that Congress change, and cut, the programs that swallow the bulk of the government’s spending — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid."  Trump, however, is not seeking an ideologically pure conservative state of the sort imagined by Paul Ryan, at least not the ideologically driven conservatism that has done so much for the state of Kansas.  Trump really wants to be the CEO of America, looking down from the executive suite on a nation of admiring sycophants and toadies.  He wants, or so his every tweet seems to suggest, an abject dependency not on the machinery of an independent administrative state, but on him and his whim, what he and Bannon and others of like mind decide to toss down into the crowd.     Trump imagines himself to be Augustus Caesar, founder of a new American imperium, but we have elected instead a Commodus, the beginning of the end.  

A deep inherent conflict

Back in the day when Noam Chomsky was a linguist, not a political commentator, he postulated that language had a deep structure and a surface structure.  I won't delve into linguistics, but I do find the distinction useful.  In my on-going attempt to comprehend the state of our politics, particularly the state of conservative politics, I do think there are a couple of "deep structures" that explain why and how people can be induced to act against their own interests.   One such "deep structure" is religion and a "faith-based" world view.  I have touched on it a number of times elsewhere, but the deep identification of the GOP with the evangelical religious movements has changed both.  The republican orthodoxy is no longer a rational response to the observable world, as such, but the tenants of faith and deviation is no longer disagreement, but apostasy.   I have touched on this in a number of previous posts, but there is another aspect of evangelicalism that deserves mention -- its anti-imperialism.   Central to the christian deep structure is resistance to and ultimately victimization by the imperial power of Rome.  It was not an active, but a passive victimization.  A government closer to home carried out the crucifixion, but the magisterial indifference of Rome gave their permission.  There is nuance to the story, of course, but my point is simple.  Implicit throughout the GOP orthodoxy is a sense of resistance to and victimization by government.

It is interesting, for example, that the GOP now has hegemony over the government of the US.  For the most part, it controls all three branches of government -- all of congress, the Supreme Court, and the Executive.  It does not yet control the press, though it does control the one outlet for the party faithful, Fox News, and so it is not surprising that Trump and Fox News continue to bemoan his victimization by other "fake" news outlets.  More surprising are the continued attacks on the government itself, not just the minority dissenters in congress, but the CIA and other branches of the executive itself.  A recent article by Taub and Fisher in the Times strikes me as interesting, and something I had not considered before.  It suggests "Fears of a 'Deep State' in America" -- that is to say, "shadowy networks within government bureaucracies, often referred to as 'deep states,' [who] undermine and coerce elected governments."   To get a sense of this, consider for a moment what it means when the president publicly disparages his principle intelligence agency.  On the one hand, for his base, it's simply red meat for the anti-government bias, and it surprises them not one whit that the CIA is victimizing their elected messiah.  On the other hand, for the employees and government servants of the CIA, it is at best discouraging, at worst infuriating.  It isn't surprising that some employees might engage in passively aggressive behavior, doing the absolute minimum required to get by.  It isn't surprising either that a few employees might feel betrayed, and engage in more actively aggressive behavior, leaking damaging or embarrassing information to the press, and that is what we're seeing. If reported, the leaks go a long way toward entrenching the conflict between the president and the press, not to mention the agency leaking the information, and a potentially vicious spiral could ensure.   As the Times notes, we are not necessarily talking a "shadowy conspiracy," but rather "a political conflict between a nation’s leader and its governing institutions." 

I am suggesting, of course, that there is a deep inherent contradiction within the GOP.  It cannot be both the governing party and the party victimized by and morally outraged at government.  Trump's assertion that the party is a "well oiled machine," like his assertion that he won by the most electoral college votes since Reagan, or his assertion that his inaugural crowd was large than Obama's, is contradicted by obvious evidence.  He has lost his national security advisor, Flynn, and the proposed replacement, Harwood, has refused the job.  The Times reports that Harwood "cited family and financial considerations for refusing the national security job, but privately he was reported to be worried about the effect of a mercurial president on national security decision making."  It may be true, of course, but even I have used "family considerations" as a reason for refusing a job I didn't want.  Along with organized resistance from within government, a far more likely consequence of  Trump's toxic continuation of an insurgency against the very thing he is empowered to lead will be  "an exodus of talent from the broader government.  They claim "scientists, lawyers and policy specialists at the Environmental Protection Agency, for instance, are openly disheartened at the prospect of working for Scott Pruitt, whose nomination as the agency’s new boss was approved by the Senate on Friday."  Then too, although he is completely unclear on what is messy in the mess he inherited, even if we do credit his inherited mess, we can nevertheless echo Augusta Caesar -- "I am surprised the King did not realize that a far harder task than winning an empire is putting it into order once you have won it."  

His so-called base elected a messianic figure, who "alone could solve," and they did so because they felt (with some justification) that the government was corrupt, self-indulgent, and for the most part indifferent to their plight.  The actual messiah, of course, made few temporal promises, and rightly so, because all things considered, there was little that one man, no matter how divinely endowed, could do against the Roman Empire.  The actual messiah made eternal promises, everlasting life after death as a reward not just for their enduring faith, but for "rendering unto Caesar" and enduring under crushing weight of Rome.  Trump is no temporal messiah, and as so many of us have long said, it's questionable whether he is even a competent manager.   I do sincerely doubt that Trump has the inherent capacity to admit his flailing and failing government.  Not once, during the campaign or after have I slightest hint of mea culpa, and his continued attacks on the press for reporting on his flailing government, as if the reportage not his failing leadership were the sin, suggest once again that his narcissism will prevent him from doing right, even by himself.  Neither is Trump a spiritual messiah, and one might hope that the evangelicals who helped propel him to office, in part because he "opposed" abortion, might eventually realize that they helped elect the moral antithesis of christ, the anti-christ.  I have made this assertion before, and again I am not making an apocalyptic prediction, merely pointing out what should be obvious to most -- his pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth.  I could go down the list and point to examples of each, not just the mundane failings we are all share, but egregious over-the-top examples of each.  Perhaps most of all sloth.  His three a.m. tweets notwithstanding, he is intellectually and ethically lazy in the extreme, making little apparent effort at actual understanding, relying instead on the immediacy of his superior (or so he believes) off-the-cuff insight.

So it goes.  There is an advantage to chaos for a leading class unconcerned about those they lead -- look at Venezuela.  It is the pretext of pretexts for an oppressive kleptocracy to become even more oppressive as they attempt to restore order.  Of course our democracy is too well entrenched for Venezuela to happen here, and I have already said too often that he demonstrates the dictatorial tendencies of a "strict father."  When I say that I am thinking of George Lakoff's book, and yes I am not thinking of an elephant.  The GOP has long been laying the ground for Trump, and while some (too few) republicans with moral and ethical courage are challenging him -- don't think of John McCain -- he nevertheless represents the GOP archetype writ large.  It shouldn't surprise anyone that he has returned to the sort of rally that served him so well during the campaign.  As the Post reports, "for 45 minutes, Trump basked in the glow of the love of those who still believe in him and who interrupted him with adoring applause nearly 100 times. He reiterated his campaign promises, bragged about things he has already done, blamed Obama for leaving him with 'a mess like you wouldn’t believe,' denounced the 'fake news' media, pulled a fan onto the stage, referenced a terrorist attack in Sweden the night before that didn’t happen, and compared himself to Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln." All of which point to a man who feels trapped and isolated in his new role.  As the Post reports it, "he couldn’t hear the chants from hundreds of protesters stationed across the street who accused him of being a hateful dictator and Russia’s puppet, among other things."  He does not really want to be the the man in charge.  Like those now chanting in protest of him, he wants to be the man victimized by and railing against the men in charge, especially the ever-present figure of Obama, darkness personified.  We have elected a man who is not only moral and ethical equivalent of the anti-christ, but a man lacking imagination.  I believe he sincerely wants to be the leader of a unified America, but the only unity he can imagine, or tolerate, is an America unified in its fear and adoration of him.  End of story.  

Betsy DeVos, School Vouchers, and Complexity

One form of anti-intellectualism is a resistance to complexity.  I do have to admit that sometimes complex matters boil down to an elegant simplicity -- Einstein's famous formula linking energy and mass is a case in point -- but to arrive at that elegant simplicity often requires winnowing through a good deal of complexity.  For every simple solution to a complex problem, there was considerable questioning in the background.  Does it account for this?  Does it account for that?  When the answer is "no," the elegant simplicity morphs immediately into the simplistic.  If a solution doesn't take into account the reality that surrounds us, such as it is, then no matter how much we might want it to be THE answer, it isn't.

The Post, today, published a story by DelReal and Brown that provides a case in point.  They write that "Washington has long designed education policy to deal with urban and suburban challenges, often overlooking the unique problems that face rural schools."  Not all schools are urban and suburban, and an education policy that ignores the reality of rural schools is not THE answer, no matter how much we might want it to be THE answer.  The go on to point out that "with a new administration in the White House that prefers 'school-choice' approaches — favoring charter schools and private-school vouchers so parents can opt out of public schools and bring taxpayer dollars with them — the nation’s rural schools are left to wonder about their fate."  Trump has to know that his presidency is principally a "rural presidency."  He is in office, at least in part, because he (shamelessly?) manipulated a rural voting base that has inextricably linked small town christian values with the GOP and Trump, for better or worse, was the "christian" and the GOP candidate.  Nevertheless, Trump one wonders how Trump could have the least experiential appreciation for rural values.  It's difficult to imagine Trump sitting in Grinde's Diner, at six in the morning sipping coffee with men wearing overalls and ball caps emblazoned with feed store logos, but nevertheless those were the people who voted for him.  When Ted Cruz leveled the accusation of "New York values" at Trump, he was pointing directly at this lack of experiential appreciation, but it went nowhere in part because it was equally difficult to imagine Cruz sitting in Grinde's Diner.  I mention Grinde's Diner, not only because it is a "real" place, but because one can't eat there without noticing its support of the local high school athletic teams.   Of course, Trump isn't the only one out of touch.  His choice of education secretary, Besty DeVos, is equally out of touch with the realities of rural life, as her remark on "grizzlies" demonstrates. For those who want a pop-culture reference, to get a sense of how deeply public schools are embedded in small town culture, watch a couple of episodes of "Friday Night Lights."

I doubt that vouchers are a solution to anything, and would tend to ensconce privilege for the privileged.  Before I go on, let me say outright that public school funding is a complex mish-mosh and it varies from locality to locality, state to state, and includes everything from lottery funds, property taxes, state taxes, local bonds, grants, and yes federal funds.  What I am about to say is a way of conceptualizing the problem, not a solution to the actual problem of providing education to our nation's youth.  That said, the rich have always had educational resources for their children, and as the DeVos confirmation hearings demonstrated, neither she nor her children ever attended a "public" school.   One has to admit that private education is often "better" than public education, though what makes it "better" is often a matter of personal preference.  Sometimes it is "better" because it upholds more rigorous academic standards, sometimes it is "better" because it upholds a particular religious doctrine, sometimes it is "better" because it has appealing programming the arts or the sciences, but regardless, those who can afford the tuition will send their children to "better" schools.  If you have no children or your children attend private institutions, taxes that go to public schools do not directly benefit you.  Property taxes are a particular sticking point, and because the rich own more property, both business and personal, they tend to pay more in taxes.  Although this means "better" public schools in the districts where they live, but they are still public schools that must be all things to all people and consequently "worse" than many private options who are not caught up in egalitarian failings.  They resent the taxes in part because they are "in addition to" the tuition they pay at private institutions, and so wouldn't it be great if all or a significant portion of those taxes be returned to them in the form of a voucher that they could subsequently apply to their private educational option.  Extrapolating on this idea, wouldn't it be great if everyone had this option -- that is to say, if everyone received a voucher that could be applied to offset the tuition at the institution of their choice?  They could then choose schools for their children that better fit their definition of "better," to include schools with a clear religious agendas.

What is wrong with more choice?  By way of illustration, let us say that, instead of spending enormous sums of money subsidizing public or mass transportation, we decided to give everyone an annual "transportation voucher" of $1000 and people could spend it however they chose.  One thing would happen immediately.  For those who commute to and from work with mass transportation, the cost of commuting would go up considerably.  In most cities -- and of course mass transportation depends upon masses and is an urban, not a rural, phenomenon -- the fares paid by riders recover between 25 and 35% of the cost.  The remainder is paid by taxes, usually sales taxes.   From there, relatively simple calculations can be made -- that is to say, the anticipated increased cost of fares can be compared to the $1000 stipend to see which is the better deal.  If the rise in the cost of fares exceeds $1000 it's a bad deal for those who depend upon public transportation.   The same applies to the sums of money subsidizing public or mass education.   Here again, suppose we decided to give everyone an annual "education voucher" of $1000 and people could spend it however they chose.  One thing would happen immediately.   Public or mass education is funded entirely by tax dollars.  If all or some of those tax dollars were diverted to "vouchers," they would need to make up the difference and begin charging tuition similar to higher education.  In short, what had been "free" before would now represent an out-of-pocket expense for parents.  From there, the same relatively simple calculations can be made -- that is to say, the anticipated cost of tuition can be compared to the $1000 stipend to see which is the better deal.  If the tuition exceeds $1000 it's a bad deal for those who depend upon public education.  

Implicit in either calculation, however, is the assumption that all else remains the same.  Sales tax pays for the transportation voucher, property tax for the education voucher.  A cynic might ask, why change the existing status quo if everything remains virtually the same?  A skeptic might ask, who benefits and how?  The idea of choice is appealing to many Americans, but there is always a difference between the theoretical and actual choices available to people -- i.e. theoretically, I can buy any automobile I want, but the actual means available to me limit my choices severely.  Theoretically, I could send my children to any schools I want, but the actual means available to me would likewise limit my choices severely.  With that in back of one's mind, let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that public education is fully tax funded and private education is fully tuition funded.  If, suddenly, all primary and secondary education were fully tuition funded, the $1000 voucher would not significantly increase the actual choices available to me and most Americans.  We would find ourselves limited to those schools where the annual tuition is around $1000.  In reality, these would be pretty crappy schools. There are reasons why the annual tuition at the "better" private schools runs upwards of $30K a year, a cost that would consume the full annual income of altogether too many Americans.  In that respect, vouchers would change little or nothing.  The poor would have "poor" schools fully funded by tax dollars, except now at one remove through the accumulated vouchers of the parents.  Those rich would continue to have "better" schools mostly funded by tuition dollars, except now those "better" private schools also receive an additional government subsidy of $1000 per student.

Still, the idea of individual choice is appealing to many Americans, particularly when it comes to religion.  The public schools, for example, are government entities, and under the establishment clause, cannot be used to promulgate any particular religious doctrine.  Some of my neighbors in Mountain Home voted for Trump, for example, because they believed he would "bring back prayer to the public schools."  Of course, I am quick to ask, "prayers to whom and in what form?  Prayers acceptable to the LDS or the Catholic community?"  When the object is to over-turn court rulings on the establishment clause, such a distinction might not be immediately important.  Vouchers that allow parents to choose their school would also allow circumvention of the establishment clause, insofar as the vouchers themselves would not establish a religion -- theoretically, they could be spent at a muslim or buddhist school -- but in actuality the vouchers would be spent at schools representing the religious majority and in many smaller communities that school would be the only viable alternative available.  Vouchers would serve principally to reinforce majority religious perspectives.  Insofar as there are regional differences in majority religious perspectives -- think the Mormans of Utah as opposed to the Baptists of Alabama as opposed to the Catholics of Louisiana -- it would also serve principally, over time, to reinforce already existing regional religious differences.  

Although most Americans recoil at the idea of "class" distinctions -- the workers thinking themselves "every bit as good as their bosses" -- I could also point out that relatively small differences in tuition would also reinforce ever finer and more invidious "class" distinctions.  For example, where multiple choices are available, imagine a school that costs $1000 annually as opposed to a school that costs $4,600 annually.  The former represents a monthly expense, after voucher, of $0.  The latter represents a monthly expense, after voucher, of $300.   For someone making $30K a year, that represents 12% of annual income.  For someone making $100K a year, that represents a little less than 4% of annual income.  Who would "choose" the $1000K school, who the $4,600 school, and what would be the consequence of that choice for the child socially?   One could imagine someone making $30K sacrificing to send their child to the "better" school, but what happens when a second or third child comes along?  Even the parents most willing to sacrifice for their child may find the expense simply impossible.  Although theoretically egalitarian and open to choice, over time, the demise of public education and the emergence of vouchers within a "privatized system" would also serve to reinforce already existing economic class distinctions.

Although too most Americans would recoil at the idea that "religion" and "science" are incompatible, I might suggest that, over time, choice would exacerbate other forms of "class" distinction.  Although I have known scientists that have religious belief, their religion always struck me as somewhat deracinated.  If they hold to the observational truths of science, it makes literal belief in the revealed truth all but impossible.  It reduces the bible to literature and the god of the bible to a literary character -- a character of supreme importance, no doubt, but nevertheless a character whose significance resides in allegorical or metaphorical truth.  At which point, religion may be important to the "spiritual life" of the individual, but it is irrelevant to the larger enterprise of science.  I say this because those who choose a religious education may well engage with an excellent religious curriculum, but if the school remains true to their roots in faith, if it insists on the literal truth of the bible, if they reject deracinated forms of religion, they will also reject the fundamentals of so-called STEM education in science, technology, engineering and math.  Those who choose a scientific education may well engage with an excellent STEM curriculum, but if the school remains true to their observational skepticism, if it insists on the provisional truth of theory, if it rejects the dogmatic truth, they will also reject the fundamentals of a faith-based education.  The former will teach science as though it were merely technology.  The latter will teach religion as though it were merely philosophy or literature.  As parents choose the one over the other, over time, the demise of public education and the emergence of vouchers would also serve to reinforce already existing cultural distinctions.  As a side note, the Trump voter who sneered at the "snobbish cultural elites" and the liberal voter who sneered at the "ignorant redneck" Trumpist were each doing so, not on the basis of economic class distinctions, but on the basis of cultural class distinctions. 

Et cetera.  Having said all that, it's unlikely that the demise of public education and the emergence of vouchers would leave "everything the same."  Part of the push for vouchers comes from the resentment of those who are disproportionately funding the educations of other people's children.  The resentment is fanned by the notion that they are also funding an education that they find questionable.  Even if vouchers were implemented, and they had greater choice to send their children to more acceptable schools, the core resentment of those who are disproportionately funding the education of other people's children would remain.  Since public education is funded largely through property taxes, let us say, for the sake of argument, that the prevailing tax rate for education is 5 mills.  If I owned a $1,000,000 home, that would mean an annual tax of $5,000.  If I also owned an apartment complex with say 50 units valued at $5,000,000 that would mean an annual property tax of $25,000, which coupled with my personal property tax would mean a total of $30,000 annually.  How is that fair when I have only one child and pay $30,000 toward her education while each of the 50 residents of my apartments have multiple children, and pay nothing toward their education?  Shouldn't everyone have some skin in the game?  Perhaps the voucher should be proportionate to the contribution replicating the "neighborhood" distinctions that existing prior to the demise of public education -- i.e. the differences between the assessed values of homes in one school district as opposed to another school district.  I wouldn't want to second guess how things might change, but as changes are proposed and we ask, "who benefits and how?" I doubt that the answer will ever be "the poor."   

The more one digs into the complexities of vouchers, the less they seem like a good idea -- at least to me.  Better to avoid even the modest complexity outlined above (modest because the real complexities of school funding are even more daunting) and focus on a single issue -- choice!  If we put vouchers in place, you will have more choice and can send your children to schools where prayer is not only allowed, but encouraged!  in the meantime, pass out the guns, the grizzlies are potentially coming!  

Trump, Autocracy, and the Faith of the Faithful

Toward the end of my last post, I wrote that, as a "liberal," I believe we must address economic inequality and environmental threats, and because neither economies nor environments stop at political borders, it implies not only local, but cooperative global action.  As a "liberal," I also believe we must address social inequality, which implies, of course, a set of "winners" and "losers" as we make the least among us a bit greater, and the greater among us a bit more humble.  As a "liberal," I believe we have a reciprocal duty to tolerance, which implies, of course, an intolerance of intolerance, particularly the sanctioned or systemic intolerance that limits social or economic opportunities on purely arbitrary grounds like race, or gender, or even sexual preference.  As a "liberal," I am rediscovering my youthful idealism in Trump's outrageousness, but at the same time I am growing weary of kicking against the pricks.  

I put liberal in scare quotes, partly because I have never really thought of myself as a liberal or a conservative, more as a moral pragmatist.  Let me be a bit reductive and suggest that the moral part of "moral pragmatist" is a governing intentionality or imperative.  When I say that, within the context of corporate business, the governing imperative is "profit."  This is not "moral" in the way that most people think of "moral" -- e.g. obedience to a  divine commandment -- I nevertheless think of it as a moral imperative because serves to differentiate those "good" instrumental acts that lead to "profit" and those "bad" acts that lead to "losses. " In my moral universe, the pragmatist part resides in the observation that the ends DO justify the means, and a certain hardheaded attendance to facts follows.  Some actions actually DO improve profits, others DON'T.  We need to be cognizant of the difference.  Business fails when it clings to bad behavior that leads to losses.  

I should point out too, this observation does not necessarily imply that the corporate mogul can do anything and everything convenient to improving profit.  The ends DO justify the means, but we can always impose ethical restrictions on the available means.  Most are the reciprocal, "do-unto-others" sort of restrictions -- the corporate mogul does not want his competitor engaging in clandestine industrial sabotage against him, so he refrains from engaging in clandestine industrial sabotage against them.  In the modern world most of these reciprocal restrictions are embodied in the "rule of law."   Everyone knows that ethical restrictions do not eliminate bad behavior, but they do allow sanctions against those who "break the law."  

In short, there are, in essence, two sorts of bad behavior -- that which is ineffectual relative to the moral imperative, and that which is violation of ethical restrictions on our acts.  I mention this because there is always the possibility that a "good" act effective relative to the moral imperative may be a "bad" act relative to the ethical restrictions -- e.g. the corporate mogul who dumps toxic chemicals, improving the bottom line, but violating ethical standards.  Such acts are almost always justified as "doing what is necessary"-- e.g. in another domain, torture may be used to advance the moral imperative shared by law enforcement and intelligence communities to "protect our people," but its use clearly violates ethical restrictions on means permissible to that end.

So, with that in mind, as a moral pragmatist, I find Trump outrageous on a number of levels.  First, there is the narcissism.  For the narcissist, there is really only "me, me, me, me, me," and one moral imperative, "serve me and my ego" takes precedence over all else.  As Frank Bruni put it, "there’s no topic that Trump can’t bring back around to himself, no cause as compelling as his own. And while I and many others have examined his outsize egomania before, its migration into his administration can’t be noted too often or overstated."  We are all guilty of a certain level of narcissism, in part because we are all condemned to see the universe, so to speak, through a single set of eyes.  For Trump, however, "this isn’t just some random brush stroke in his portrait. It’s his primary color. It’s everything. It drives policy. It warps diplomacy. And it badly hobbles his leadership, because you can’t inspire others if nearly all of your energy goes so transparently and unabashedly into inflating yourself."  

Having repeated that, I am not sure it hobbles his leadership quite as much as Bruni suggests.  We, the people, have become inured to narcissism, the most blatant form of which is propagated by the ubiquity of reality TV, whether it be the Kardashians, the Duck Dynasty, the Honey Boo Boos, or the Pawn Kings.  At one point in my life, I thought we had watched because we felt morally superior to the reality show stars.  One might cite that as evidence of my own narcissism, because I definitely feel superior to the lot.  I found them not only deeply uninteresting, but broadly repugnant in their self-indulgence, self-importance, and occasionally their self-pity, the on-going selfie of their selfishness, and assumed that virtually everyone felt the same way.  I also assumed everyone watched to reaffirm their own superiority, but as time marches on, my thinking has evolved.  It simply affirms, as OK, our own self-indulgence, our self-importance, and especially, above all else, our sanctimonious self-pity so often on display throughout reality TV.  As Bruni notes, Trump used the occasion of Martin Luther King day to "talk about his struggles. His hardships," and "he couldn’t mention Martin Luther King Jr. without flashing on the King bust in the Oval Office, noting that there had been an erroneous report of its removal and lamenting what he sees as his terrible victimization by biased journalists and 'fake news.'” As a consequence, "King’s martyrdom became Trump’s martyrdom."   

We shouldn't be surprised.   Trump's business enterprise was the business of branding, no different in kind or essence than the "branding" of Martha Stewart. or the Kardashians.  They really have nothing to offer, except themselves, and perhaps a "life-style" unattainable to the vast majority of Americans. They offer themselves along with the promise that, if you buy into the brand, you can share in the "life-style."  During the election process, Trump offered up a "brand," and the brand was "Trump." If one bought into the brand, not only could one achieve the "life-style," but one could say "you're fired" to all those unctuous, condescending elites.  Of course, we know Celebrity Apprentice is one thing, the US government another thing.  Of course, we know the former is a construct of the media, by the media, and for the media, the success of which is measured, as Trump reminded us again and again, by ratings.  As the man himself said, “we had tremendous success on ‘The Apprentice.’ And when I ran for president I had to leave the show. That’s when I knew for sure I was doing it, and they hired a big, big movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to take my place. And we know how that turned out. The ratings went right down the tubes. It’s been a total disaster. And Mark will never, ever bet against Trump again. And I want to just pray for Arnold if we can, for those ratings, OK?” One can defend against the questionable appropriateness of such remarks at a prayer breakfast by calling them a "lighthearted moment," and ultimately, one has to admit, there is little of substance behind it all, except insofar as it shines a klieg light not only on Trump's outsized ego, but the ephemeral foundation of that ego -- ratings.  Here again, we know Celebrity Apprentice is one thing, the US government another.  We know the latter has consequence, and should be taken seriously, but Trump understood something, intuitively, that is easily overlooked by those who do take it seriously.  For the vast majority of Americans, an understanding of the government is driven by the self-same media that brings you Keeping Up with the Kardashians. The media has created a government in its own image, the success of which is measured through its obsessive concern with polling and approval ratings.

We shouldn't be surprised, but we should be a bit frightened.  Trump trumpeted his outsized ego throughout the campaign, and gave every indication that his one moral imperative was the further aggrandizement of Trump, and that all other imperatives were subsidiary to that one imperative.  It probably shouldn't surprise us either that he is a jealous president, quite willing not only to visit the iniquity of his vindictive tweets on those who thwart his self-image, at the same time showing mercy and favoritism to those who abet his self-image.   Each and all, ultimately, must serve that one imperative of his aggrandizement.  The instrumental means to that end are not contingent upon "truth," at least not the "truth" of our daily lives when we enjoin others and obligate ourselves to avoid "false witness."  In our daily lives, we expect the truth, but exercise a certain amount of skepticism.  The used car salesman's "information" may be slanted by a governing imperative to sell cars and make money.  A politician's "information" may be slated by a governing imperative to please his powerful constituents and retain office.   Both may even, god forbid, lie to us.  Our fact-based media operates on two assumptions, that it is ethically wrong to bear false witness, but that a governing imperative may occasionally motivate even the best of us to violate that standard with slanted information or an outright lie.  They assume those who lie -- whether used car salesmen or politicians -- will want to cover up their ethical lapse, and their "job" is to uncover the truth for the broader public.  Trump, however, presents us with an enigma.  What to do when there is no attempt what-so-ever to cover up the "lie?"  What to do when the president boldly asserts that his inauguration crowd was the largest ever, an assertion easily debunked simply by looking at photographs?  They are puzzled that we the people are not universally outraged at such an obvious falsehood, at such an obvious ethical breach.  

Charles Sykes, in an editorial entitled, "Why Nobody Cares the President is Lying," touches perhaps on the source of the mystery.  There is a bit of mea culpa about his piece.  "As a conservative radio talk show host," he writes,  "I played a role ... by hammering the mainstream media for its bias and double standards."  Insofar as all facts are open to alternative interpretations, there is nothing wrong with revealing bias and double standards, so long as one maintains some allegiance to the "facts."  Indeed, the whole point of free and open discourse is the development of alternative interpretations of the facts, alternative theories, on the assumption that over time the best interpretation of the facts will emerge as a consensus.  There is a difference, however, between alternative interpretations of the facts and the non-sensical notion of alternative facts.  We have Kellyanne Conway to thank for the notion of "alternative facts," and the idea has received considerable, deserved derision.  As Reg Henry of the Pittsburg Post-Gazette has written, tongue in cheek, "No longer do we the people have to suffer the tyranny of the old-fashioned, fuddy-duddy, restrictive sort of facts formerly defined as being true," and indeed alternative facts are truly democratic.  Alternative facts are "available to the highest official in the land (the president) to the lowliest peons (me and other media types). Now you can make up your own facts — they are no longer the property of elites."  And as Henry points out, "alternative facts have been around for years on talk radio and other bilious outlets but it took the genius of Ms. Conway to properly identity the phenomenon. She has got the number of the beast."  The exasperation one hears in his voice has been around for years as well -- perhaps most blatantly in commentators like John Stewart.  Outside of a few stalwart institutions, like the Wall Street Journal, conservative media were not so much hammering the mainstream media for its bias and double standards, building alternative interpretation of the facts, but simply hammering home  "convenient" and "alternative" facts.  One can forgive convenient facts, but not alternative facts, because, as Sykes admits, "the price turned out to be far higher than I imagined.  The cumulative effect of the attacks was to delegitimize those outlets and essentially destroy much of the right’s immunity to false information. We thought we were creating a savvier, more skeptical audience. Instead, we opened the door for President Trump, who found an audience that could be easily misled."

Sykes should cut himself something of a break.  As an educator, I can say with some cynical confidence that the vast majority of my students were not interested in confronting the facts and building alternative interpretations that would account for those facts.  If alternative interpretations exist, they assumed one of two things -- either one is as good as another in an "anything goes" sort of way or that one is the "correct" or "approved" interpretation -- and of the two, mostly the latter.  They wanted the "correct" interpretation so it could be memorized and reproduced.  Whether out of mental laziness or my incapacity to inspire, it was the rare student who actually extended an effort to become a savvier or more skeptical thinker.   Regardless, it's no wonder that people are susceptible to propaganda, and I think Sykes touches on an essential point too when he quotes Gary Kasparov: “the point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”  Perhaps, but "the real threat is not merely that a large number of Americans have become accustomed to rejecting factual information, or even that they have become habituated to believing hoaxes," as Sykes puts it.  There are plenty of people with agendas who want to annihilate certain inconvenient facts and perpetuate certain hoaxes -- the "truth" about gun safety and public health, the "truth" about climate change, the "truth" about recent employment and wage gains, and the list goes on.  A goodly portion of our population have long since become accustomed to rejecting factual information that does not conform to a particular agenda, or the "revealed" truth of an incontestable source.   That we debate the existence of climate change despite a plethora of verifiable evidence is at fundament no different than the continuing debate over evolution which too comes with a plethora of verifiable evidence.  Neither conforms readily with what we WANT to believe, and what we WANT to believe more often than not takes precedence over what SHOULD be believed given the available evidence.  I can hear my more recalcitrant students asserting "this is a "free country" and "I can believe what I WANT to believe!"  Of course you can, I would respond, and you can believe the moon is made of green cheese if that makes you happy, but you'd still have the facts wrong.  I think Sykes is right when he says, "The real danger is that, inundated with “alternative facts,” many voters will simply shrug, asking, “What is truth?” — and not wait for an answer."  

Nature abhors a vacuum.  Back in the day, I made a distinction between observational and revealed truth.  In the broader sense of the "culture wars" it is the difference between science and religion, but there is a more mundane aspect to the distinction.  If revealed truth is the truth we must take on faith, how much of what we see and read in the news is simply revealed to us and must be taken on faith?  While one must wonder a bit at the naiveté of someone who travels across the country to see for himself if a pizza parlor covers a child prostitution ring, one can fault neither his outrage nor his instinct to see and verify for himself.  Since I have neither the time, the effort, or the means to see and verify for myself, a good deal of what I read in the Post or in the Times, I must simply take on "faith."   Of course, my "faith" is a skeptical faith, and in the case of political action, it always asks, "who would benefit and how?"  It is one thing to accept on "faith" assertions about climate change from NASA, another thing to accept on "faith" assertions about climate change from those who profit from the oil industry.  I share the Times assumptions that NASA has little motivation to lie or to cover up inconvenient facts, whereas the oil industry has considerable motivation to do so.  If I were to place my "faith" in either, it would be for the former over the latter.  Not all faith is skeptical faith, however, and for a goodly segment of our population, it has been hammered with the notion that the highest and most profound truth is the truth of faith untainted by observational skepticism.  It was a peculiar genius of the GOP to position itself as the champion of THE one true faith to the extent that, in the minds of many Americans, the GOP itself is identified as the one true faith.  The GOP does not so much flirt with theocracy, but openly advocates it, and Sykes doesn't say, or perhaps feels he shouldn't say, that the conservative media undermined not only faith in the observational veracity of the mainstream media, with all the consequence that follows from that, but has at the same time has demanded a rejection of all faith but the one true faith.  It is to believe in the gospel, and the gospel of christ and the gospel of the GOP have become virtually indistinguishable in the minds of many Americans.  Its truth is the truth, the only truth, and anything that does not conform to this truth can be rejected as lies, falsehoods, and "fake news."

I began this post with my own moral imperatives -- a sound economy, a protected environment, greater economic and social equity, and the like.  Most of my "issues" are as my wife would say "technical," and they all admit of technical solutions, the efficacy of which can be debated.  I personally do not have all the answers, but I do have "faith" that there are answers and the proof, so to speak, will be in the pudding.  Nor do I have answers for our current political morass, and fear there is just too much confusion for any immediate relief.  For many of my neighbors here in Mountain Home, to challenge the GOP is to challenge God himself and Christ as our savior, and they simply won't have it.  Trump didn't create this identification -- it has been building since at least the time of Reagan -- but he did capitalize on it.  By almost any measure, Trump is the anti-christ.  I mean this not to evoke some apocalyptic vision of the future, but on a mundane level, subject to observation.  If there are christian virtues, with the possible exception of sobriety, he stands forth almost defiantly as their antithesis.  Humility?  Come now.  Chastity?  His profligacy and pussy grabbing are well documented.  Charity?  A string of broken and ignored promises.  The list could go on, and there was some question during the election itself whether the evangelical base of the GOP would continue to support him, but the identification proved to be altogether too resilient, particularly when he coupled lip service to christianity with the more virulent resentments of race, ethnicity, and gender.  Trump's particular genius was to position himself not merely as the champion of the faith -- like Cruz or Rubio -- but as THE object of faith.  Since his descent down the escalator in the gilt heaven of Trump tower, he has presented himself unabashedly as a messianic figure.  Even if he wasn't quite so bold as to proclaim, "I am the Lord thy God," the repeated assertions of inherent superiority, from his big brain to his big penis, were epitomized by his assertion "only I can solve."  And while he might object to the word "jealousy," implicit to his reaction to news reports that Obama's inaugural  crowds were larger than his own is the jealously of a jealous god that would demand "thou shalt have no other gods before me."  And finally, of course, while there are any number of reasons an autocrat, to include an autocratic god, might warn "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain" his response to criticism is anything but magnanimous.

I will end this post with an observation.  I don't think Trump will create a dictatorship in the 20th century mold -- the sort envisioned in Orwell's 1984.  There are too many leaks, Wiki and otherwise, to think a surveillance state can be effectively managed for the entirety of the population -- target enemies, perhaps, but not for the persecution and suppression of the average Joe.  Besides, why bother?  As income disparity increases, the suppression of the average Joe proceeds apace, not with the SS, but with punitive economic policies that benefit the rich literally at the expense of those in the shrinking middle and expanding bottom of the pyramid.   We have elected an autocrat, and a self-serving oligarch, but he is not an ideologue cut from either the red cloth of Mao or the black cloth of Hitler.  I see  plenty of evidence pointing to a kleptocracy, not least his own willingness to promote his own properties and his daughter's brand, but little evidence of ideology beyond Trump's own overweening id and whatever whim flows from it.  A recent Atlantic article by David Frum paints a convincing picture of the future.  He suggests that "trump will not set out to build an authoritarian state," in part because he simply doesn't need to do so.  "His immediate priority seems likely to be to use the presidency to enrich himself," and the current economic and political apparatus seems sufficient unto that end, particularly if a GOP controlled congress ignores the Emolument Clause and continues down the path of weakening enforcement of ethics standards.  The courts, however, still have a bit of spine, as the rejection of his executive order banning selective immigration demonstrates, and so, as he goes about his business of enriching himself and his family, "he will need to protect himself from legal risk," and the most effective way of protecting himself, as Frum points out, is to hide behind the iron doors of the state.  Then too, Frum suggests that, "being Trump, he will also inevitably wish to inflict payback on his critics. Construction of an apparatus of impunity and revenge will begin haphazardly and opportunistically. But it will accelerate. It will have to."  Right now, there is a sense of adolescent petulance about Trump's tweets -- and they do not have the consequence, apparently, that he would like them to have -- but my fear is that he will grow more sophisticated in his payback, and his apparatus of revenge will become more effective, which of course means more compliance with and second guessing of his overweening id.  

The irony of ironies, the hoax of hoaxes, will be this: the quality most demanded from the people will be patience.  There are too many here among us who have invested their faith in God and the GOP as if they were one and the same, opening the door to a messianic narcissist.  Like Job, their faith will be tested again and again and again as the hegemony of their party facilitates the oligarchs, allows the economy becomes more and more and more extractive, enables the few take a greater and greater and greater share of the national wealth from the many.   As Frum points out, however, their faith may be rewarded.  Trump will, no doubt, "enrich plenty of other people too, both the powerful and—sometimes, for public consumption—the relatively powerless."  Those who benefit from Trump's recklessness will go along for all the obvious reasons, and the relatively powerless will go along because, if they have sufficient faith like Job, if they endure without complaint like Job, they will receive their dispensation.  The scene where "grateful Carrier employees thanked then-President-elect Trump for keeping their jobs in Indiana" will play out as needed (only as needed) to demonstrate that the lucky few, the truly faithful ARE rewarded.   Hayek may have been correct that the planned economies envisioned in the 19th century were a path to serfdom.  There is another, more effective path, and it is the path the GOP has led us down -- in Trump we Trust.  It has happened before, and it is happening again.