Despots or Tyrants, Thought & Action; Laziness or Sanity

Contains my subject essay

Perhaps it’s a sign of advancing age, or perhaps it’s merely the continuation of a nearly life-long infatuation, but certain persons and events of the 1930s fascinate me. 

As a Baby Boomer, I became aware of the Second World War, and to a lesser extent the First World War, while in early grade school. Perhaps this exposure along with an innate desire to make sense of events and persons--at least their chronology--that I imagine first spurred my fascination with history in general. But as I grew older and more sophisticated in my historical understanding (even to a modest degree), the war as war--as a military struggle--held less interest for me than the events that led up to the war, the political decisions, cultural trends, and ideas that led to the great conflagrations of the twentieth century, the First and Second World Wars. How could (presumably) rational people get into such horrific situations? What accounts for all of this folly? Who can make sense of it? 

In addition to a fascination with the players and events leading up to the Second World War, I also find myself drawn to thinkers who wrote between the wars. A few of them have resonated deeply with me. Max Weber’s “Politics as a Vocation,” was written in 1919, at the close of the First World War (the installment of the Long War that ran hot and cold between 1914 and 1989). This essay became one touchstone of my thinking about politics. Among other topics, Weber wrote about the “ethic of moral conviction” and the “ethic of responsibility,” a fundamental and sometimes tragic contrast between two ways of approaching political decisions. One of Reinhold Niebuhr’s works from the 1930s, Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932) sets forth an Augustinian (Christian) political realism for the twentieth century by looking at the trends afoot in the world around him in the early 1930s. Niebuhr was at once a Christian and a hard-headed realist. Another compelling source from this era, although she didn’t publish her major works until after the war, is Hannah Arendt. Her earliest published book is The Origins of Totalitarianism (1950) and was written and published after the war. But its inception is grounded in the time leading up to the war. And my most recent “discovery,” R.G. Collingwood, the Oxford philosopher, published significant reflections on political and cultural developments in the waning years of his life (d. 1943). He increasingly turned his attention to political developments in the 1930s while continuing his formidable (non-political) philosophical writing. I've already posted extensively about another Collingwood essay from this period, "Man Goes Mad" (1936). (Part 1-13 of quotes with commentary).

It is to Collingwood again to whom I want to turn, to share his brief but suggestive essay about politics that he wrote sometime around 1941. Returning to my opening theme, Collingwood’s words are rooted in this pre-war and early war era, although, as he often does, he draws heavily upon Plato and the Greek tradition. But the most salient points of the quotes below drew my attention because these words strike me as eerily prescient as I write this in 2019. My nation and much of the world have rekindled a romance with the worst sort of leaders and politics. I believe we can all learn from reflecting on Collingwood’s essay. 

The essay I’m referring to is entitled “The Three Laws of Politics,” and it’s included in Essays in Political Philosophy by R.G. Collingwood, Edited with an Introduction by David Boucher (Clarendon Press, Oxford 2004), 207-223. Collingwood drafted the essay as his Hobhouse Lecture to the London School of Economics. Collingwood, because of his declining health, was unable to deliver the lecture in person. In addition, he adopted the lecture from the larger project he was working upon at the time, The New Leviathan (1943), the final book that he completed before his death in January 1943. (Chapter 25 of the New Leviathan is entitled “The Three Laws of Politics,” but it isn’t as comprehensive or persuasively written as the Essay.) Below is an extended set of quotations from near the end of the essay that struck me. After the quotes, I offer my reflections on Collingwood’s argument. 

Collingwood’s Words

Sec. 4 The Third Law of Politics
Whatever qualities are thus exhibited [by the ruler] in the course of ruling are exhibited as models for imitation. The ruler as pathfinder is the ruler as setter of examples.. . . . I think that nobody will deny that the position occupied by a ruler is such that the characteristics displayed by him in the course of his activity of ruling will in fact tend to be imitated by those over whom he rules; that the tendency will be stronger in proportion as the bond between ruler and subject is closer; and that the fact of this imitation, which in any case will to some extent occur even unconsciously, will be replaced in proportion as the ruler becomes master of his trade by his deliberately offering examples intended to be worth following.  

Sec. 7. The Third Law, continued. . . . 
What I suggest is that, whether or no this is recognized by the accepted or Greek theory of human intelligence, there are two kinds of unintelligence in the world, and these have different functions. There is what may be called negative unintelligence, which is the thing of which Plato says that its proper object is nothing at all; a person in this frame of mind, trying to grab something, grabs nothing; he comes away from all mental effort empty-handed. The other kind of unintelligence is a creative unintelligence, creative of chimeras and nightmares; unintelligence of this kind creates these things more profusely according to its own fecundity; this fecundity being a positive power in so far as it creates, but a mere absence of power in so far as what it creates is nothing at all. The world is in no sense the richer for all its creative efforts. And in this sense it is all one whether you talk about this positive unintelligence or that other negative unintelligence which I mentioned first; in either case there is nothing. 
The question with which we are dealing is this: how can a man, without being intelligent, acquire that mastery over men which the Greek theory of life ascribes to intelligence?
. . . . 
The answer is that there are two ways of being a fool: you may be foolish to stupidity, so that your mental hands grasp nothing of what they try to grasp; or you may be foolish to craziness, so that your mind creates illusions or hallucinations about the things of which you are trying to think. These two kinds of foolishness occur in practice much confused together. The stupid fool, in politics as elsewhere, creates nothing;  the crazy fool creates much although this much, being crazy, comes to nothing. 

But in the meantime, not having been weighed, the crazy fool presents us with the aspect of being a formidable producer. This is in general terms the explanation of things like Nero, of which Tacitus and the whole of Roman history had not a word to give by way of explanation. Small blame to Tacitus; even the greatest brain of Greece had not gone deeply enough into the theory of error to offer him the blueprint of a solution. Plato had an inkling of the truth; but not more than an inkling; Aristotle had not even that. 

The crazy type of fool can pretend to be wise the fertility of his diseased mind gives him an initiative, futile it is true, over his fellow men. He has just as much initiative as a man who is really intelligent; in one sense even more, for he has less to fear. The intelligent man offers himself to an equal wrestling bout of minds; he stands up to all comers, and faces criticism; he does not know from what side criticism is going to come, or that will not prove him to have made a mistake. The crazy type of fool with his psychological hold over his audience will easily convict him of being a fraud which, strange though it may appear, is rather a feather in his cap than a thing to be ashamed of. [Collingwood’s note: “A thing I noticed in Italy in 1939.]. . . . 

 

Sec. 8 The Platonic Tyrant
Plato, in the ninth book of the Republic, has given his readers and memorable description of what he calls a tyrant. By a  tyrant he does not mean what we call a despot, or ruler who rules for personal motives and with considerable display of cruelty, arrogance, and other qualities valuable to him chiefly in their enhancement of his personality. The despot, with all this emphasis on his personality, may have something to emphasize; the laws which he administers with cruelty may be wise and justly administered. There may be a barbaric swagger about him, but it may serve to lend eclat [French: glow] to a genuine political performance.  

The tyrant, on the other hand, puts up no political performance. He is merely so much jetsam, floating on the surface of the waves he pretends to control. His qualities, according to Plato’s scale of values, are not the qualities of a free man, let alone those which would enable him to be the ruler of free men, but the qualities of a slave. He is not the sort of man who can triumph over his own weaknesses; more like the sort of man who would yield to them on every occasion; his progress through the world is a rake's progress supported by burglary, pocket-picking, and other low forms of predatory activity, preparing the way, says Plato, for higher forms of thieving such as robbing temples; or, as we should say, confiscating deposits in banks. His rise to the position of tyrant is consequent on a class movement; it is concurrent with the rise of the lowest social class in the city to the position of gangsters patronized by himself; it is not his own strength or energy that lifts him to a position of tyrant but, so to speak, his low specific gravity. It is in his capacity as so much jetsam that he rides effortless over the waves of politics.

. . . .Sec. 9 The Reversed Action of the Third Law of Politics
The disease works by what I call a reversed action of the Third Law of Politics. Like every other political law, this one does not enforce itself automatically; men must take trouble to obey it. Its direct action begins with a body politic composed of what we call sane men; the result is that they accept the leadership of sane. Where, you may ask, does all this labour go to, all this running to keep in the same place? The answer is: it is the work done by the community in keeping itself sane. It is much easier for any kind of man known to me to doze off into daydreams which are the first and most seemingly innocent stage of craziness. If labour-saving  is what do you want, give up all this trouble about thinking: go mad and have done with it. That is what the tyrant has to offer mankind--an end to the intolerable weariness of sanity. 

The reversed action of the Third Law of Politics is precisely this cessation, on the part of the body politic, of the effort after sanity. The engine has slipped into reverse; and the whole thing, with delicious absence of exertion, is sliding downhill. It is much easier to speak and act and write crazily than to do it intelligently; you just let yourself go, and there you are. This is the first phase of the reverse action. The next phase is the resulting ‘democracy’ (as Plato and Hitler, strangely united for once, agree in calling it) creates leaders for itself, leaders from its own members, leaders of fashion in the temporary freaks of craziness, under whose tyranny the whole body politics lets itself go completely more than ever; for to shout with the mob (that is to obey the tyrant of the moment) is the easiest thing anybody can do. . . . . 
Our relation to the future is not that the future, while it is still future, is to be foreknown by us; the future can be known only when it has become the present; but that it has to be made by us, by the strength of our hands and the stoutness of our hearts. (223) 

Commentary

About whom may Collingwood have been writing? As one can discern from this essay and his other writings, Collingwood was a true classicist and a student of modern history as well (and, as he is best known, one of the foremost voices in the philosophy of history). But Collingwood addresses the political crisis at the time that he writes, so it’s no surprise that Hitler and “Italy” (Mussolini) received specific mention. But as I want to address the political crisis of my time. I could identify a growing number of figures on the current world stage that might fit Plato’s definition of a “tyrant” or that of a despot. But there is one figure who fills my mind because he’s the president of my nation, and he embodies the characteristics of a despot and a tyrant as described by Collingwood. In fact, the first order of consideration is whether we best describe Trump as a “despot” or a "tyrant". 

Collingwood distinguishes Plato’s “tyrant” from “what we call a despot.” Let me repeat Collingwood’s description of a “despot” as one who

rules for personal motives and with considerable display of cruelty, arrogance, and other qualities valuable to him chiefly in their enhancement of his personality. The despot, with all this emphasis on his personality, may have something to emphasize; the laws which he administers with cruelty may be wise and justly administered. There may be a barbaric swagger about him, but it may serve to lend eclat [French: glow] to a genuine political performance.

The application of this description doesn’t demand a subtle analysis. Trump entered the fray with little hope of winning the nomination, let alone the presidency. Given his history of attempting to buy and curry favor with candidates and officials from both parties, and his lack of any policy analysis or sophistication, to contend that his candidacy and presidency are foremost a vanity project is more than justified. To the extent he has carved out a policy legacy, it’s been in the area of immigration, judicial appointments, and tax cuts for the wealthy. As to immigration and migrants, Trump has promoted gratuitous cruelty within a context of what might otherwise be lawful (even if controversial) processes. But everything that is done within his administration that he can control is done with an overweening emphasis on his “personality.” And to contend that there is a “barbaric swagger” that Trump practices also seems beyond the need for proof here. To suggest that this adds a “glow” to his “political performance” provides an interesting turn of phrase to describe his sense of showmanship cultivated by his apprenticeship in the world of professional wrestling, beauty pageants, and “reality'' TV. But a glow--or radioactivity--he does have. Trump has certainly cultivated a cult of personality, which, combined with a well-earned reputation for intimidating, threatening, or smearing any critic or potential rival, makes him a unique figure in the history of the American presidency. So I’m inclined to say that he’s a “despot,” albeit one checked--at least to some degree so far--by the institutions and norms established by the Founders to check such figures and heretofore honored in the American republic. 

But doesn’t Trump fit Plato’s definition of a “tyrant” as Collingwood describes it? Let’s review Collingwood’s description before we move on: 

The tyrant . . . puts up no political performance. He is merely so much jetsam, floating on the surface of the waves he pretends to control.

I question Collingwood’s contention that a tyrant “puts on no political performance.” Is this possible? Even the most absolute and compelling tyrants of the twentieth century, Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini didn’t forego elaborate shows of public pageantry (although I’m less sure of Stalin’s displays). But perhaps this makes them only despots. Perhaps a tyrant can act behind the scenes as a sort of wizard of Oz. I suppose that this may fit dictators in less-developed nations, where military officers and political insiders can climb to the top of the heap and then rule without much in the way of public acknowledgment. And, as Collingwood goes on to suggest, the tyrant doesn’t seriously attempt to manipulate political tides, although this contention, like the one about no political performance, seems counter-intuitive, at least if judged on an absolute scale. Even the most powerful dictator depends on some fellow elites, even if only a Praetorian Guard, to maintain office and life itself.  

But once we move beyond this element in the making of a tyrant, we see something that certainly rings true of Trump. 

His qualities, according to Plato’s scale of values, are not the qualities of a free man, let alone those which would enable him to be the ruler of free men, but the qualities of a slave. He is not the sort of man who can triumph over his own weaknesses; more like the sort of man who would yield to them on every occasion[.]

In this part of the description, the person who is a slave to one’s desires isn’t a “free man,” but is truly a slave. Given the outsized appetites that Trump exhibits, for sexual conquest, publicity, security, fealty, and food, he fits perfectly for this part of the description of a tyrant. Trump is a poster boy for uncontrolled desires, an embodied antithesis of the classical model. All humans suffer weaknesses, but most of us try to minimize or hide these weaknesses. Trump bares himself to the public, perhaps ingratiating himself to those who believe themselves overcome with such otherwise shameful failures. His very slavishness becomes a part of his public spectacle. 

The complement of the tyrant’s slavishness is the tyrant’s grasp for easy money. Collingwood describes the trait:

[H]is progress through the world is a rake's progress supported by burglary, pocket-picking, and other low forms of predatory activity, preparing the way, says Plato, for higher forms of thieving such as robbing temples; or, as we should say, confiscating deposits in banks.

Trump’s money-making ventures have been marked by bankruptcy, fraud, stiffing contractors, tax fraud, and most recently, stealing money from a charity that he controlled. The degree of continuing and unabated unscrupulousness of this man beggars belief. No one comparable had become a contender--and certainly not president--before his arrival on the political stage in 2015. Of course, Trump would not take money directly from the U.S. treasury because that would alienate the plutocratic elite upon which Trump (in part) depends, all of his faux-populism notwithstanding.  

Now Collingwood turns briefly to the political support that brings the tyrant to power: 

His rise to the position of tyrant is consequent on a class movement; it is concurrent with the rise of the lowest social class in the city to the position of gangsters patronized by himself; it is not his own strength or energy that lifts him to a position of tyrant but, so to speak, his low specific gravity. It is in his capacity as so much jetsam that he rides effortless over the waves of politics.

Trump certainly rose to power on a “class movement,” although Americans don’t like to think of “class.” And most Americans hold a suspicion of “movements” although popular movements play a huge role in American history (abolitionism, prohibition, women’s suffrage, union organizing, civil rights, gay rights--to name only a few). And while today America we have some of the most significant disparities of income and wealth in our history, the identity of the “class” that brought Trump to power cannot be delineated solely based on income, wealth, or job status. Geography (rural-small town vs. urban-suburban) and educational attainment (scaled from high school or less on up to the doctoral level) must be added to more traditional identities such as age, race, and traditional party loyalties when attempting to understand the current wide rift among American voters. These factors, in addition to the mix of motives and reasons held by each individual voter, provide most of the explanation for the success of Trump. His win (in the Electoral College) doesn't stem from his talents as a politician. (Scott Adams’s “master persuader” argument notwithstanding). In short, as Collingwood and Plato suggest, a tyrant is more a symptom than the disease, and so it is with Trump. Demagogues, would-be tyrants and despots, only flourish in a receptive climate, one where otherwise cautious voters with an innate tolerance for the status quo become willing to take exceptional risks in choosing leaders and office-holders. When conditions become bad enough on a relative scale, that is, a scale based on perceptions of social, political, or economic inequities (and not absolute deprivations), social upheaval becomes a reality wave that can carry someone like Trump into office (with help from a non-democratic electoral college). 

As you read near the beginning of his essay, Collingwood addressed what I will label the twin evils of “unintelligence” delineated as “negative unintelligence” (inability to grasp an idea; some measure of dumb) and “creative unintelligence,” which is the ability to spin-out ideas that have no foundation in reality. It is this latter description (creative unintelligence) that I want to explore more fully, for it seems the defining species of “unintelligence” in our time. To paraphrase the Gospels of Mark and Mathew, the mentally poor will be with us always; to wit, those who don’t have the time or capacity to think deeply about public affairs. Democracies will always need to contend with this shortcoming and seek to alleviate it as best they can. But those who spin fantasies, or who purvey what Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt has labeled “bullshit,” are those today who pose the greatest risk to democracy and sound policy. “Fake news” is a concept bandied about today as a weapon, but it’s just a successor to “disinformation campaign,” “dirty tricks,” and propaganda from days of yore. Yet, there is one problem with this “creative unintelligence”  designation that I don’t think that Collingwood addresses; that is, what if it’s an intentional form of thought and action. In other words, some may be misguided, but others are the (intentionally) misleading. 

My thoughts, I must admit, are prompted by watching members of Congress attempting to defend President Trump in regard to his actions concerning Ukraine and the resulting impeachment investigation. I venture into these thoughts (and this entire essay of mine)  with the knowledge that I’m biased against Trump, and for a long time. I see almost everything about him and his administration as confirmation of my earliest perceptions of his as a potential president. (Here, and yes, Plato gets in on it at the beginning.) So I’m at high risk for a bad case of confirmation bias. And with over four decades in the law, I know that sometimes you have to defend a position that doesn’t provide any attractive explanations and that tests the limits of creativity and reasonableness in attempting to defend a client. However, notwithstanding popular perceptions, most lawyers--myself included--follow the rules and don’t suborn perjury or make arguments that we cannot make in good faith. Everybody (should) have limits when arguing on behalf of a client. (Some don’t, and they are rightly prosecuted; e.g., Michael Cohen.) But with these warnings stated, I’m prepared to move forward.

Are Republicans deluding themselves that they have reasonable, colorable (under the law) arguments? As to the ultimate issue, as to whether impeachment is warranted, even if all the facts are as they seem to be that Trump attempted to shake down the Ukrainian government for an unjustified investigation to implicate his chief political rival (at present), I suppose one can make the argument (demur) that this does not merit impeachment. But as to a true subject of Trump’s requested “investigation” of the Bidens or Ukrainian involvement in the theft of Clinton or DNC emails, I can find no substantive basis. I can find no substantive grounds for the bullshit* defenses offered to date by Republican members of the House. The degree of bad faith, of intentional wrongdoing in the sense of promoting frivolous and misleading argument would, in most courts of law would draw a firm reprimand (or worse) from an impartial judge. In short, “crazy foolishness,” as Collingwood describes it, maybe crazy like a fox. The henhouse and not the truth is the object of the venture. And we should note that while none of this “unintelligence” (intentional or no) is either new or unique, it is no less reprehensible. 

Before we close, we should turn one last time to Collingwood’s discussion of the role of the body politic in promoting and tolerating a tyrant or despot. Collingwood attributes a break-down in political judgment to laziness. “Sanity” is an effort, “daydreams” are a breeze. If we don’t want to make the effort, we can take up the tyrant’s offer: “an end to the intolerable weariness of sanity.” Collingwood anticipates the post-war work of Hannah Arendt when he calls upon us to act to shape our future by thought and speech. 

In the throws of the early days of the war against Nazi Germany and after the fall of France, Collingwood offers his readers, his nation, and those who share the values that he promotes, a different path. Collingwood, the great philosopher of history, calls upon us to eschew Hegalian and Marxist fantasies of “scientific laws” that foretell our future. Instead, he calls upon us to be the actors and not mere props in the play of our future: 

Our relation to the future is not that the future, while it is still future, is to be foreknown by us; the future can be known only when it has become the present; but that it has to be made by us, by the strength of our hands and the stoutness of our hearts.

Collingwood's "Man Goes Mad" with commentary, Pt. 3

Some shared perspectives between Orwell & Collingwood

From "Man Goes Mad:"

War is the ultimate end of the modern state. All the forces that go to make up the modern state combine to drive its activity in the direction of warfare. On the other hand, war is readily becoming more and more destructive, and has now reached a point in its development where it cannot be waged at all, on any considerable scale, without involving the destruction of civilization over the entire field of conflict. . . .  [T]he traditional politics which in England is called democracy, and on the Continent liberalism, is here out of date. It thinks of war as an instrument which statesman are free to use or not to use in pursuit of their ends, whereas it is in reality a monster which, having invoked it, they not cannot exorcise. What began as a means to an end beyond itself has lost that character: it has become a thing that must be used, whatever comes of it. . . . Much of what has happened in militarist countries within the last few years suggests that in those countries what we call civilization is no longer valued. Freedom of thought and speech, personal liberty, and many other features of what we should call civilized life, have been deliberately repudiated with the avowed aim of rendering the nation a more docile and responsive fighting-machine. For the militarist, the incompatibility of civilization and war is only a nail in the coffin of civilization. The only corporate activity which he recognizes as desirable in a nation is warfare itself. [310]

"War is the ultimate end of the modern state." My first reaction is to consider this an overstatement. The modern state, in addition to its more traditional functions (law enforcement, provision of public goods) has added economic and social welfare to its portfolio. And, of course, the state has always been involved in defense of territory (and often it seeks the addition of territory). But in my lifetime (from near the beginning of the Cold War), the military function has grown remarkably in the U.S., whereas before WWII, the military had been surprisingly limited in its role. We Americans began to refer to the president as our "commander-in-chief," which he isn't unless we're members of the active duty military. All of this demonstrates the indisputable fact that war and democracy are inimical to one another. War will inevitably seek to strangle democracy as a threat to its powers. Democracy as an expression of the will of most people will seek to avoid war. (N.B. This last contention needs qualification. I believe that avoidance of war is a popular default position among non-elites; however, this default position of the demos is easily transposed into supporting war by propaganda appealing to nationalist or retaliatory sentiment.) 

In reviewing the latter part of the quote, I noted how Collingwood anticipates Orwell, who published 1984 in 1949, seven years after Collingwood's death and 13 years after Collingwood penned this essay. Recall Oceania's perpetual state of war with Eurasia and Eastasia, each mega-state controlled by an ideology that extols and supports war. 

Think also of Stephen Bannon and some of the thinkers whom he has favorably cited, such as the Italian fascist Julius Evola. These and other thinkers, for instance, Georges Sorel in fin de siecle France, argue that violence and war are a necessary tonic for peoples and nations. Indeed, WWI began with many on both sides of the fight believing that a war would alleviate the malaise felt in many parts of European society during the period leading up to the war. One would think such notions would have perished in the ashes and graveyards that the war created, and while this was true of many, a committed few concluded that an increase of dosage was required. Mussolini and Hitler are only the two most well known of that latter sort. I have not doubt that Collingwood was thinking of these two as he wrote this about the "militarists." And it's not difficult today to identify those who hold this militarist attitude. 

Dilbert on Donald: I'm Not Persuaded

Comment withheld

Along with many, the Donald Trump phenomenon fascinates me. He comes across as a bombastic, narcissistic demagogue, mostly (but not entirely) full of hot air and baloney. On the other hand, he was until recently the favorite of most Republican voters. Many political commentators have attempted to deconstruct the Trump phenomenon. Is his popularity the result of his personal characteristics? Or is it the result of a miasma in the political air that has infected Republican voters? (I’m happy to note the Democrats and sane people seem immune to the Trump airs.) However, one assessment of Trump that has caught my attention comes from Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip.

Dilbert creator & hypnotist Scott Adams

Scott Adams wrote How to Fail at Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of My Life Story, a book that I enjoyed. (My review here.) In that book, Adams writes about many topics, but his distinction between goals and systems is worth the price of the book. But the book has much more than that. Adams is an open-minded and inquiring fellow, and he’s willing to try ideas and techniques to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Among the many practices he’s tried is hypnosis, and he finds it effective. I’ve been doing some reading on my own about hypnosis as a part of my interest in all types of persuasion, influence, and power. And while I don’t have any training in hypnosis, Adams does, and he writes about it in his book and in his blog. He defines hypnosis broadly, and like me, he’s interested more widely in persuasion. As a part of this interest, he’s been writing about Donald Trump. Adams describes Trump as one of the “Master Wizards” of persuasion (His Master Wizard—or Master Persuader—Hypothesis is an offshoot of his Moist Robot Hypothesis. Read his book or go to his blog for details.) In his ongoing commentary on Trump and the Trump presidential campaign, Adams entertains the possibility of a Trump landslide in the coming presidential election. By the way, Adams doesn’t claim that Trump would necessarily be a good president, just that he’s in a good position to win because he’s exhibiting the ways of a Master Wizard. I think that Adams is onto something, but I find Adams’s hypothesis has severe limitations.

In reading about hypnosis via The Rogue Hypnotist and Kreskin, as well having done some background reading on Milton Erickson, I believe that there are situations where conversational hypnosis can work. Also, there’s the whole topic of advertising and propaganda as a form of mass persuasion, which relates to hypnosis. Kreskin, for instance, claims there is no hypnosis in the sense of a pure trance, only suggestibility, and from what I’m learning, that’s probably an accurate characterization of what goes on. Kreskin reveals that in his shows, when he “hypnotizes” someone on stage, he makes a point of choosing a volunteer who is readily open to suggestion (which he’s learned to identify quickly). Some people are more much open and suggestible than others.

I believe that I’m on the less suggestible side of the scale. I’m WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) (courtesy of Jonathan Haidt), and I’m also a lawyer with over 30 years of experience in negotiations, hearings, trials, and appeals. In other words, I have a professionally trained crap detector. This is not to say up never been bamboozled (I have), but at least in the arena of a courtroom I know how to ask probing questions and deploy appropriate skepticism. This attitude carries over, at least to some extent, in other aspects of my life.

For instance, this skeptical-inquiring mindset, which is so handy in cross-examination, kicks on when watching a Republican presidential debate. The amount of free-flowing crap is immense. I'm not suggesting that the Democrats don’t dispense it, just that it's not the same magnitude of volume. Some people may accuse me of being close-mindedness, but I believe that reality has a well-established liberal bias. (Please take the statement with a large grain of salt as I stated it with tongue-in-cheek. Oh! How I love a good cliché!) Of course, someone will say that this is merely my liberal bias shining through, but I started my life as a Republican and only left that fold slowly and without rancor towards family, friends, and acquaintances that remained within the fold. (I learned in the most recent debate that I’m over three decades ahead of Ben Bernanke.) I’ve changed other beliefs and practices as well, and these changes didn’t occur as a matter of whim or some spooky, undue influence. In other words, careful thought and reason play a role in my life and can play a role in the lives of others. It can play a role in politics.

So the question becomes, “How much baloney can a candidate dispense and still garner a majority of the votes?” This a vital question because it goes to the viability of democracy itself. Some have defended democracy as good enough if people are smart enough to vote for their own interests. (I think Richard Posner makes this argument in Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy.) Of course, self-interest or organized group interests do carry significant (often inordinate) weight in political decision-making, but even granting that weight, many decisions aren’t compelled or even influenced by financial self-interest (narrowly defined). Most issues about cultural and ethics discussed in the political realm, such as gay marriage, abortion, and marijuana legalization, aren’t issues that affect the pocketbooks of most voters. Yet, many hold strong views on these topics. If those views are not informed by reason and inquiry, and not shaped by self-interest (narrowly understood), then how are they shaped? Visions informed by habit, fear, or hope quickly fill any void. In the arena of values (culture war) politics, we see and hear political pitches aimed at fundamental beliefs, fears, and hopes. (Alas, fears trump—pun intended—hopes as primary motivators.) In this arena, the candidate with the best skills for suggesting—without arguing—for a position will probably come out ahead. But can the candidate who fools a lot of the people a lot of the time win over enough of the voters?

Scott Adams suggests that Donald Trump is bluffing about immigration to establish an opening negotiating stance, or that Trump’s actions are the opening act in a three-act play will bring about a happy ending for both the protagonist (Trump) and illegal immigrants. Tragedy will turn to Romance. Maybe. Adams may argue (and I haven’t seen this yet), that candidates throughout American history have campaigned saying one thing and then doing quite another. Sometimes this is a matter of duplicity, sometimes the result of a change in circumstances, and sometimes the result of a genuine change of beliefs. However, it must remain a fundamental tenet of electoral democracy that we believe that a candidate will act consistently with what the candidate says during the campaign. When this doesn’t happen, such as Nixon’s pledge to “Bring Us Together”, it causes a profound rend in the body politic. Thus, the most fundamental question becomes one of the degree of trust we can place in a candidate to do what the candidate says he will do. Alternatively, as some voters tacitly suggest, should we grant a candidate carte blanche upon entering office? Most voters do this by not paying any attention to candidates. They base their choice on the flimsiest of reasons, such as whether the voter would like to sit down and share a beer with the candidate (typically men) or whether the candidate would “keep us safe”.

Trump reminds me of the former Italian leader, Silvio Berlusconi and the current Russian president Vladimir Putin. Both of them were elected leaders, with Berlusconi often playing the clown and accomplishing very little. Putin is quite severe, actively increasing the power of the state and pushing a nationalist agenda. Other elected leaders who provide a negative role model are Hitler and Mussolini, both of whom came to power through electoral process (they both immediately threw overboard after having gained power). Note! I’m not saying the Trump is a Hitler and a Mussolini. I’m only citing them as examples of the efficacy of some types of political rhetoric and persuasion. Hitler was able to persuade a many in the German nation to follow him. Of course, he killed or imprisoned those whom he could not persuade. Persuasion that draws upon nationalistic rhetoric, triumphalism, and fear, can—in certain circumstances—prove extremely persuasive. No matter how persuasive Trump may be to some, to support him for his persuasive abilities (if they do hold up enough to get him even nominated), is not an indicator of this fitness for office. (And, again, Adams has not endorsed Trump.)

A general reservation that I hold about Scott Adams’s Master Wizard Hypothesis is that it doesn’t address democratic eloquence. For instance, the current incumbent two-term president, Barack Obama, is often quite eloquent in formal speeches, and quite measured in his interviews. In rhetorical style, he’s the anti-Trump. And so for that matter is Dr. Ben Carson, Trump’s current chief rival for the Republican nomination. Despite significant obstacles, American voters have twice elected Obama as president of the United States. (And remember wooden Al Gore outpolled the affable George W. Bush.) If we look throughout American history, the greatest and most effective presidents, Lincoln, Washington, Franklin Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, are all displayed a high level of verbal intelligence and eloquence. In the modern era, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt could speak movingly to large crowds, but their off-the-cuff bombast – well, I can’t think of any examples of that. The era of presidential debates started in 1960 with Nixon and Kennedy. Neither of those two candidates displayed the verbal sparring and insult that we hear now between the Republican candidates. In fact, both were courteous and respectful toward the other. While not always the case, the verbally eloquent and articulate presidential candidate defeats the opponent with a greater amount of bombast, even those who may have used some of the techniques of hypnotic suggestion that Adams find so empowering in Trump. From what I can discern from my study, hypnosis works in a significant way when the receiver wants to be open to suggestion. We may thus conclude that many Republican voters want to receive the suggestions the Trump (and the other Republican candidates) want to purvey.

All this may prove moot, as some national polls, as well as most recent Iowa poll showed the Ben Carson is now ahead of the entire field. Mild-mannered Dr. Ben Carson, another anti-Trump. Or is he just more subtle in his choice of language and staging? It appears that people are attracted to Carson precisely because of his mild, understated manner. How does this work with the Adams’s Master Wizard Hypothesis about Trump?

In one blog, Adams notes that someone measured Trump as speaking at a fourth-grade level. Adams thinks that’s a part of Trump’s communication wizardry. Any effective speaker must know the audience and match the appropriate linguistic register to that audience, but how low should you go? For instance, listen to Obama talking to and about “folks” when he’s in a small group or informal setting and compare that to the more literary register of his formal speeches. Or think of Lincoln telling humorous tales and bawdy jokes to his friends sitting around a cracker-barrel and then penning the immortal words of the Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural Address. Did Churchill bring the English language to war by using vague phrasing at a fourth-grade level to rally the British people in their darkest hour? And that later became their finest hour in part because of his eloquence. All of these speakers used powerful images and sophisticated language that resonated with widely held beliefs shared by their audiences. So does Trump do this so well? Has the American electorate been dumbed-down? I’m not persuaded yet.

Based on my years of study and practice of persuasion, I don’t believe that there is a Holy Grail of persuasion. There are many little things that you can do to increase your odds of success, but nothing guarantees success. We are subject to the whims and caprices of that most implacable of gods, the Audience. Even the Master Wizard Gerry Spence, who’s Win Your Case: How to Present, Persuade, and Prevail--Every Place, Every Time, that Adams has read (if it follows Spence’s earlier How to Argue and Win Every Time I’ve read) says you can’t win every time—at least not in the sense of getting everything you hoped for through persuasion. (Spence’s titles go in for hyperbole, but he is very persuasive and credible.) You have to choose your battles as best you can. I believe that Trump’s success to date is more a function of the hopes and fears of his audience. Or more accurately, their hopes that he can deliver them from their fears. I believe that this Washington Post article, assessing Trump’s appeal as a function of his audience provides greater explanatory power about Trump’s success to date than does Adams’s Master Wizard Hypothesis.