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.
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