Thoughts for the Day: Saturday 6 March 2021

1986 publication, still more than relevant
 

Amusing Ourselves to Death

Neil Postman

Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

The Science of Conjecture

James Franklin

On such matters of evidence, the Lombard commentators already show the characteristic medieval tendency to generalize much more than the Roman lawyers and to inquire into abstract principles. How can a law legislate against those who plot against the king’s life, when only God can know anyone’s thought? “[The question] is solved in this way: it is known through indications, for example if someone is discovered in the king’s chambers after hours having a naked sword under his cloak, or with a knife in his sleeve, or if the cupbearer of the king while near him is seen to prepare poison.”

My most recently completed book.

Plato's Revenge

William Ophuls

Despite having lost its original theoretical basis, an outmoded mechanical worldview still prevails.

Nixon Agonistes

Garry Wills

He had this in common with the kids; he wears a Nixon mask.

N.B. The "he" is Nixon.

Conservatism

Edmund Fawcett

Unless we treat politics as a zero-sum game in which the whole field is to be won and held by one side, recognition of an enduring left-right divide across the field reflects, in rough terms, an acceptance of politics as unending argument amid diversity. It reflects acceptance, in short, of a core element in liberal democracy: the acknowledgement of unsettleable social conflict, fought over politically by the right and the left.

N.B. This is what U.S. politics has lost, at least for those who have adopted the Trumpist line, which now seems a majority of the (what retains the brand) of the Republican Party.

The Life of the Mind

Hannah Arendt 

And this speaking in analogies, in metaphorical language, according to Kant, is the only way through which speculative reason, which we here call thinking, can manifest itself. The metaphor provides the “abstract,” imageless thought with an intuition drawn from the world of appearances whose function it is “to establish the reality of our concepts” and thus undo, as it were, the withdrawal from the world of appearances that is the precondition of mental activities.

Biden Wins--So What Now?

 

I write this on early Sunday morning 1 November (damned switch away from DST!). I write now because on the final day of the election ("Election Day"), as we await the verdict of the American voting public, I'll be too keyed-up to write anything coherent. As a lawyer, I've waited for many a verdict, and it doesn't get any easier even as you've been through it many times. Each case is unique; each time a significant change in the future awaits the outcome. This case, the case of Donald J. Trump, has now reached to point of closing arguments to the American voters (i.e., those who don't shirk their "jury duty"). This election is about whether this "jury" decides to free itself and open its future to better outcomes, or we chose to condemn ourselves to a future marked by fear, anger, and resentment, and the "leadership" of an incompetent, vile, and threatening man. 

If, when you read this, you have sound grounds to believe that Joe Biden has been elected president, then by all means (reasonable and legal) celebrate. However, I suspect most, like me, will more likely simply feel a sense of relief. We have not condemned ourselves. We will sigh and say "Thank goodness!" (For it is a sense of goodness that would allow such an outcome.) We will go to bed or if late enough, on to our daily activities, with a sense of ease, at least in the sense of reduced anxiety. 

So what can we expect with a President-elect Biden? Will we awaken to a scene of rainbows and unicorns and people joining around the campfire to sing Kumbaya together? 

No. 

In electing Biden--and even if he gets a Democratic Congress--we should understand as a nation that we have only broken the fever, that Trump is not the underlying cause of this dis-ease in our body politic. Trump is only an opportunistic secondary infection. Voters have acted as the antibodies to this infection, working to drive this infection away. But the body politic isn't cured once and for all of this dis-ease. Underlying Trump is a chronic dis-ease that allowed our nation to succumb to this secondary infection. Although the American voters have vanquished Trump, Trumpism, the syndrome that he embodies, will remain. American has suffered this infection of right-wing extremism for almost its entire 245 years. Sometimes the infection has been acute (the Civil War as the worst outbreak), but there have been other manifestations, such as the Klu Klux Klan uprisings during Reconstruction and the 1920s;  Joe McCarthy and witch-hunts of the late 1940s and early 1950s; and the Civil Rights movement backlash and the candidacy of George Wallace, to name just a few examples of outbreaks. This politics of fear, anger, and resentment from the "right" has always been far more important than anything coming from the "left." Radicalism and violence have arisen from the left, but these outbreaks tend to be acute although sometimes intense infections that don't continue too long and that don't usually translate into electoral clout. The violence that we've seen in American cities this year has been the result of acute, intense frustration with police killings and brutality and all of the underlying conditions that allow such wrongdoing to continue. But never in my lifetime has the radical left gained any lasting power, but not so the right, especially to the degree manifest by Trump's administration. 

If we're lucky, we'll get something approaching politics as usual, only with a New Deal-like shift. We can hope for a change in policies that will begin some fundamental changes in the American political scene. A "Green New Deal" (of some sort) to address climate change and environmental degradation is a must. Also, we badly need significant reforms of our electoral system to end voter suppression schemes and to allow fair and proportional representation. (The Supreme Court required the states to practice "one person one vote" back in 1962 in Baker v. Carr. We should apply this principle to all elections.) A respect for minority rights is baked into the American Constitution even as they're too often ignored in practice. However, there's no brief for minority rule, which has become increasingly common. Only once have Republicans won the popular vote for president after 1988: Bush in 2004. And yet, in 2000 and 2016 Republicans won the presidency despite having lost the popular vote. 

In short, we live in a time of troubles. We know this even as we don't want to acknowledge it or we can't quite understand it. The human herd is spooked. This is a time when dictators and radical movements ferment and often gain power. And by "radical movements" in this instance I mean those who eschew politics, speech, and persuasion in favor of violence. There can be peaceful radical movements, such as the American Civil Rights movement as led by Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to name but one prominent example; and there have been many less well-known but nevertheless potent peaceful movements. We can expect--and no doubt need--some (peaceful) radical movements. Indeed, the change we need isn't generated or pushed by traditional political discourse, but it swells up into political discourse from below. We need to radically (to the root) re-think our relationships with each other, with others around the world, and with Mother Nature herself. The journey of modernity is over, and we need to move on to something better (and I'm not talking about silly "post-modernism). What that "better" consists of we must hash-out continually as we progress. We have to turn to prophets, but not those who scare us with hellfire and brimstone, but the whose who provide us with a vision, a new way of seeing and understanding ourselves and our world. Only when the prophets do their work, and the people convert can this change be channeled into the political sphere. I think (hope) that we have a start on it. If we don't make some very immediate--and yes, drastic--changes very soon, I fear that we'll be in a hell of a fix. (And I mean that in a literal sense as well.) 

So, yes, celebrate, and then let's get to work. 

Post Script: Monday 9 November 2020

I've decided to post the above. Nothing has changed my mind. The repudiation of Trump was not nearly as overwhelming as I'd hoped, and few Trump enablers--virtually the entire Republican Party--paid an electoral price. But otherwise, the post seems on point. We still have to deal with the problems of Trumpism or perhaps its more lethal (to democracy & our lives) mutations. 

Reflections on Gary Lachman's "Trickle Down Metaphysics: From Nietzsche to Trump"

 I posted the following as a "comment" (one heck of a long comment) on Gary Lachman's website where he posted "Trickle Down Metaphysics: From Nietzche to Trump." He also posted it at Academia.edu, a website for posting academic papers. Take your pick: Word doc or HTML. Either way, it's an important read. I recommend you pick your format and read Lachman's piece first. 

Gary, 

Thank you for posting your excellent paper, "Trickle Down Metaphysics: From Nietzche to Trump". As usual, you've provided an excellent map of some intellectual high-country for those of us like me who've not explored it in the detail that you have. In this, your account prods me toward wanting to explore more of this terrain, although I must say that you only reinforced my standing conclusion that it's not worth the coin to attempt to summit Mt. Heidegger and some of the other terrain that you discuss. But regardless of my attitude toward some of the thinkers that you discuss, I found your paper helpful and provocative. As to the provocative (in the good sense), I'd like to share some random thoughts and observations that occurred to me as a result of reading this paper, although some of these thoughts--perhaps more in the way of hunches or suspicions--have been brewing in the back of my mind for some time. 

The most prominent thought that your article arises from the implication in your article that certain trains of thought can be traced from Nietzche to Heidegger to Sartre to Derrida to Trump, although you--I'm sure accurately--point-out that Trump probably hasn't the foggiest about who most of these individuals are or what ideas they propounded. While some of the influences in this chain are unquestionable and well-documented (such as Nietzche on Heidegger and Heidegger on Sartre), the question arises for me about the extent that these highly literate, sophisticated (and sometimes obtuse) high-culture ideas exert an influence on popular culture down to the rungs at which Donald Trump, Trumpists, and his supporters reside. I fear that those of us who explore and value ideas may overestimate their importance in the wider world. And yet, all humans are full of ideas of one sort or another, many of which have no doubt filtered down from "on high." For example, the "literary elite" who wrote the Gospels and other writings in the New Testament and then Christian writers and theologians on down through history provide compelling examples of the power of ideas filtered down to the less educated public. 

I don't subscribe to the Marxist contention that all ideas are ideologies that arise from the economic substructure of society, Instead, it seems to me that there is a dance undertaken between the world of ideas and the material world--economic, social, and political--in which these ideas are spread like seeds. Some sprout while others seem to wither or remain dormant for long periods. Indeed, much of your career and efforts have been spent exploring the Secret History of Consciousness," The Secret Teachers of the Western World, Caretakers of the Cosmos, and The Lost Knowledge of the Imagination. Why did these many ideas, which admittedly run from the far-out-there to the mainstream, not create a greater effect upon society and popular thought? While I don't find the concept of "causes" in history very useful (too mechanical, too certain, too direct), I do contend that we can identify tributaries that contribute to the flow of history, the rivers of historical events and realities. In this river metaphor, the terrain, the mountains, plains, forests, and so on, constitute the material and social base through which streams of ideas must flow; some flows are cut off from the mainstream, creating solitary lakes, perhaps deep and beautiful, but outside of the flow of time. Other ideas end up in backwaters that stagnate in whirlpools that go nowhere until some random event--an earthquake, a storm--releases those waters to flow back into the mainstream. Or, in some cases, the rain never comes and those isolated ideas simply dry-up into oblivion. 

Thus, I think that we must be careful not to blame the train of thought that you've identified for Trump and Trumpism. That these ideas in some ways help water the trends and instincts that guide Trump and his followers (we can't really contend that he has "ideas" can we?), the stream of contribution is probably quite small. Trump has many forebearers: tyrants, dictators, demagogues, authoritarians, fascists, and grifters. He draws on them not so much for their ideas but instinctively, as a huckster-salesman, a flim-flam man models himself on the traits of others of his ilk. Indeed, I suggest that we all should give thanks daily that this man is so politically naive and ignorant. A person with a will to political power and a modicum of knowledge about politics combined with Trump's refined reptilian instincts would prove a much greater disaster. Someone with ideas--even crack-pot ideas--like white supremacy, anti-Semitism, or religious fundamentalisms--could (and have) done much, much worse to the world that Trump has (so far, anyway). Trump and his camp followers aren't especially new or unique in American history, or in the history of the wider world. So why did his "ideas" (such as they are) catch on now? Here I think that we have to look at the current environment, economic, social, and political, that allows such a deadly virus of ideas (or more accurately, attitudes, prejudices, cliches) to spread sufficiently to allow this man to gain and keep power. Here's where I think that developments such as economic inequality, fear of loss of status, wide-spread economic insecurity, and cultivated resentments all come into play (and this is just to round-up the usual suspects). Also, we should note that the themes and appeals that Trump and Trumpists play upon, such as racism, white supremacy, and resentment of elites, have existed within the U.S. for most of its history. Not all of U.S. history, not everywhere, not everyone, but nevertheless there, sometimes dormant, sometimes active. Yes, like a virus that we can't seem to irradicate but against which we must develop herd immunity. 

Now for a few nit-picky items. 

You identify Norman Vincent Peale, as you did in Dark Star Rising, as an influence on Trump. (And for anyone else reading this, if you haven't read this Dark Star Rising, you really should.) Peale is "the power of positive thinking" and Trump--at least at his father's behest--did attend Peale's church and no doubt heard Peale preach his blend of New Thought positive thinking and Christianity. And while New Thought, with its emphasis on the imagination and creating reality certainly could have influenced Trump's outlook, the New Thought movement on the whole, and Peale in particular (I believe), remained close to traditional Christianity and traditional values. These values would have put a brake--if he was really listening--on Donald's less seemly (i.e., greedy, lusty) aspirations. (Query: Did Trump ever have any admirable aspirations? Anyone? Anyone?)  The true artist of the dark arts that effected Trump was Roy Cohn, the man who creates one degree of separation between Trump and Joe McCarthy. Cohn was a seething bag of contradictions and a man who thrived in the underside world of politics, money, and fame and who provides the template for Trump's modus operandi. 

Also, referring back to Heidegger, you mentioned his student and lover, Hannah Arendt. I admit that I've held an intellectual crush on Hannah Arendt since I was introduced to her work as an undergraduate (oh, so many years ago!). Arendt was a student of Heidegger, and for a period, his lover. But they parted ways, both personally--and more importantly--in their thinking. Arendt was Jewish, and Heidegger did have a period of infatuation with the Nazi cause in the early 1930s while Arendt was forced to flee Germany after having been arrested early in the Hitler regime. Arendt went her own way in the ensuing years and had no contact with Heidegger until after the war. Even then, she remained respectful but wary. After leaving her studies (and personal relationship) with Heidegger, she studied with Karl Jaspers, another German existentialist, although much less well known than Heidegger. Arendt never missed an opportunity to praise Jaspers and his influence upon her. Although I've not explored his thought, based on her high praise, and my high estimation of her, I suspect that exploring Jasper's work might prove worth the time and effort. 

But all of the above is not the most important point about Hannah Arendt. Unlike Heidegger, whose head remained in the clouds (or buried in arcane poetry), Arendt went on the become one of the most--and in my opinion--the most important political theorist of the twentieth-century. Unlike Heidegger, Arendt used her career to delve deeply into the political world and to provide a vision of politics that provides some dignity to this most human endeavor. (after having plumbed the depths of totalitarianism, a new phenomenon in politics that arose in the twentieth-century). And while Arendt doesn't make for light or easy reading--I think of reading her as reading by lightning flashes of insight--she's not the convoluted writer and obtuse thinker that Heidegger is noted for Being. And in the age of Trump, there is no single thinker that we can turn to for more insight and guidance than Arendt. If we can think of Heidegger as a Trump-precursor or enabler, we can think of Arendt as the anti-Trump, the inoculation that we so desperately need. 

I also want to note that your article addresses only continental thinkers. Where are the Brits and their English-speaking off-spring? My conjecture is that such an inquiry shows that English-speaking philosophy, on the whole (and with a lot of help from the Austrians), became rather shallow with their "realism," "logical positivism," "analytic philosophy," and "ordinary language " takes upon philosophy. Not that these endeavors had no value or purpose, but these developments were aimed short and small, concerned more with the technical, the empirical, and the quotidian. Reading much of English-speaking philosophy for succor and insight during the twentieth-century would be like anticipating a high-tech weapons display and getting only firecrackers. But of course, my genealization is not universally true, and as the realist-logical positivist-analytical-linguistic analysis branch was coming into ascendency, there were others outside of this trend, such as Samuel Alexander, Alfred North Whitehead, Michael Oakshott, and my personal favorite, R.G. Collingwood. Collingwood is sometimes classed as the last of the British idealists (Green Bosanquet, Bradley), but this inaccurate, as Collingwood made quite clear to "Ryle" in an exchange of letters about an article in which Gilbert Ryle described Collingwood as an "idealist." Indeed, Collingwood is hard to classify--and the more power to him for it. He left no school of thought, but his mind ranged widely and with great insight. He's best known (and rightly so) for his work in the philosophy of history, but his work also addressed ethics, politics, metaphysics, and art (including language) in useful and imaginative ways. The final work published before his untimely death at age 53 in 1943, was The New Leviathan, a work about politics built from the ground-up modeled on (but not so pessimistic as) the Hobbes original. It was a work intended to provide an intellectual grounding for what the Allies were fighting for and against in fascism. Like Arendt, Collingwood provides guidance and insight into our time of troubles. (For an initial (and as yet uncompleted) comparison of Collingwood and Arendt, go here. 

I'll conclude these reflections with a "what if?" reference, and how the flow of ideas might have taken a different course. Ray Monk, a biographer of Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, and J. Robert Oppenheimer, wrote an insightful and tantalizing piece about Collingwood and what might have transpired in the world of philosophy--and the analytical versus continental divide in philosophy--had Collingwood been able to continue is work and remained in his influential position at Oxford (where he was succeeded by Gilbert Ryle.) One can't argue that had Collingwood lived long enough to complete all his projects and to continue to explore his thoughts that the world, even the world of philosophy, would have now been all hunky-dory, but . . . . what might have been is always tantalizing. But to borrow a rare coherent thought, "it is what it is." But at least we have thinkers like Collingwood, Arendt, and Lachman (and those he champions), to provide us guidance, the self-knowledge of history, with which we can light our way. 

Tim Snyder on Ivan Ilyin: Some Notes

This article (below) by Timothy Snyder captured and rewarded my interest in several ways.

1. It's by Timothy Snyder, a preeminent historian of 19th and 20th century Eastern Europe and Russia and an outspoken voice warning of the dangers facing contemporary America and seeking to defend American values (e.g., democracy, the rule of law, equality, free speech, etc.). Snyder has a new book forthcoming in April, THE ROAD TO UNFREEDOM: RUSSIA, EUROPE, & AMERICA, which I'm looking forward to.

2. This article examines an otherwise obscure (at least to me) early 20th-century Russian thinker whose thought has been resurrected by Putin in defense of Putin's regime. Putin's promotion of this otherwise forgotten figure raises an interesting question: why? Putin, whom, like the current American president, seems to have little interest in ideas or a deeply held sense of any guiding ideology other than grasping and maintaining power. So what motivated him to identify this obscure fascist writer and to bring back into the public eye? To what extent (if any) is Putin or any within his inner circle guided by this thinker (or any thinker)?

What makes humans so fascinating (and vexing) is that we are motivated by such a wide array of factors, from the bodily to the unconscious to the vaguely expressed ideas of groups (cultures, religions, classes, families) to carefully articulated public ideas. It seems that if even the most basely motivated of men [sic] (those focused on wealth and power) want a patina of legitimation upon their actions, even if only a rationalization (after-thought). Some, of course, are guided by beliefs, such as those found in religion (traditional and unorthodox, not to mention esoteric and occult) and political ideologies that are little different from religion in mythic structures (Marxism), or ideas that are modern (Enlightenment liberalism) and that seek to avoid religious or metaphysical foundations. We can take someone like Putin and run up and down Maslow's hierarchy of needs to identify motivating deficiencies and desires. Or we can talk about interests, emotions, and beliefs (how we model the world). Whatever rubric we use, our maps have a hard time capturing human complexity and identifying the primary motivating factors guiding any particular actor.

3. How did a person like Ilyin, grounded in Russian Orthodoxy, Kant, Hegel, and Husserl become a raging fascist bent on violence and a unique national (i.e., Russian) calling? The inputs (listed) don't predict the outputs. (The same problem applies famously to Martin Heidegger and his romance with Nazism.) But while I'm new to Ilyin, there were many others in 20th century Europe who preached the fascist path as well as that of totalitarian Marxism (Soviet ideology). How do we explain this development of this path of thought? (Julius Evola is another example of a thinker who went helter-skelter down the road of fascism.) The messianic and utopian train of Marxist thought with its attendant lack of a political theory is easier to grasp because collective action and a reduction of class conflict were widely identified as positive goods, unlike the less attractive visions of violence and domination promoted by fascists and National Socialists.

4. For those interested in the ideas that swirl around current authoritarian regimes (and wannabes), keep an eye our of Gary Lachman's "Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump," which is scheduled for release on 29 May, and which I anticipate will provide an account of the more subterranean influences (and justifications) that authoritarians and radicals draw upon in addition the more obvious sources, such as bare-knuckle capitalism, kleptocracy, white supremacy, anti-immigrant sentiments, etc.

A closing quote from Snyder:

"Ilyin meant to be the prophet of our age, the post-Soviet age, and perhaps he is. His disbelief in this world allows politics to take place in a fictional one. He made of lawlessness a virtue so pure as to be invisible, and so absolute as to demand the destruction of the West. He shows us how fragile masculinity generates enemies, how perverted Christianity rejects Jesus, how economic inequality imitates innocence, and how fascist ideas flow into the postmodern. This is no longer just Russian philosophy. It is now American life."

Ivan Ilyin, Putin’s Philosopher of Russian Fascism

Writing for White Russian émigrés in the 1920s and 1930s, Ivan Ilyin provided a metaphysical and moral justification for political totalitarianism, which he expressed in practical outlines for a fascist state. But his ideas have now been revived and…

NYBOOKS.COM

Collingwood's "Man Goes Mad" with commentary, Pt. 6

Collingwood in the 1930s

 Note that I reference my observations by the bracketed number. For instance, I expound on the first sentence of Collingwood's quote in my comment "1," etc.

The plainest political fact of our times is the widespread collapse of what I shall call, using the word in its Continental sense, liberalism. [1] The essence of this conception is, or was, the idea of a community as governing itself by fostering the free expression of all political opinions that take shape within it, and finding some means of reducing this multiplicity of opinions to a unity. How this is the to be effected, is a secondary matter. [2] 

. . . . 

The one essential of liberalism is the dialectical solution of all political problems: that is their solution through the statement of opposing views and their free discussion until, beneath this opposition, their supporters have discovered some common ground on which to act. [3]  The outward characteristic of all liberalism is the fact that it permits the free expression of opinion, no matter what the opinion may be, on all political questions. This attitude is not toleration; it is not the acquiescence in an evil whose suppression would be a greater evil; it is not a mere permission but an active fostering of free speech, as the basis of all healthy political life. 

. . . . 

            There are certain conditions under which alone liberalism can flourish. It is not the best method of government for a people at war or in a state of emergency: for then silence and discipline are demanded of the subject, bold and resolute command of the ruler. It is not the best method for a people internally rotten with crime and violence: there, a strong executive is the first thing needed; force must be met by force. Therese restrictions, however, do not amount to criticisms of liberalism on its own ground. It professes to be a political method, that is, a method by which a community desiring a solution for its own political problems can find one. War is not a part of politics, but the negation of politics, a parasitic growth upon political life. [4] 

. . . . 

Liberalism, then, requires for its success only one condition: namely that the civilization which adopts it shall as a whole and on the whole be resolved to live in peace and not at war, by honest labour and not by crime. [For, when it invites the free expression of all political views, it assumes that those who accept the invitation will use it as an opportunity for expressing political views, not as an opportunity for acts of violence.] [5]It might seem, therefore, that liberalism is a mere utopianism, based on a blindly optimistic view of human nature. But this is not the case. A liberal government is still a government, and like every government must enforce law and suppress crime. Because it set out to hear every political opinion, it is not committed to the dogma that every human being under its rule has such opinions. [318-320]

1. This "continental" liberalism may also be called "classical liberalism." It is the liberalism that American political scientist Louis Hartz (The Liberal Tradition in America) believed underlay the entire American political landscape. Until recently, the Republican and Democrat parties were essentially two different branches of this one stream. Both were committed to the essential institutions of liberal democracy. Of course, with the take-over (how hostile and unwanted I'm not so sure) of the Republican Party by Trumpism, this no longer true. We now have a fundamentally anti-liberal party in power, although it can be very liberal with the plutocratic interests that fund its congressional wing. 
2. Note the use of the term "community" here. One of the great conundrums of the Founders addressed in The Federalist Papers, and by Madison, in particular, is the extent to which a diverse, far-flung nation can foster a sufficient community to make a republic work for the new nation. To what extent can we as a nation, when "bowling alone," maintain the necessary coherence of perspectives, interests, and aspirations to keep a functional political community. I'd argue (I think Collingwood might follow me here) is that without a sense of community, we cannot maintain a democracy. By the very nature of the growth of our nation: in geography, population, economics, size of government, and so on, we lose some measure of community. But even with all of these centrifugal forces, Americans have still found periods of an intense political community, even at the national level. (Community is more easily visible at the local level, as we see with any trauma to a community.) 
3. This implies that "common ground" can always be found, but this is not always so. Yet even in cases of disagreement, a losing party may still share common ground by recognizing the legitimacy of the procedures and abiding by the decision; i.e., by "playing by the rules." When a party refuses to play by the rules and accept legitimate decisions, democracy will fail. And this is what's been happening at the Congressional level. Congressional and legislative Republicans have moved the goalposts by gerrymandering, refusing the act on presidential appointments, and even by ending the filibuster.  (Ending the filibuster isn't always a bad thing in my book, but it's a change in the rule motivated by temporary partisan advantage, not an aim to make the process more democratic.)
4. The flip side of this observation might be included in the dictator's handbook about how to end democracy. As Madison observed long ago, and as I've been preaching for a long time now, war and democracy don't mix. War strangles democracy. The concluding sentence of this paragraph (in italics) foreshadows the arguments of Collingwood's younger contemporary, Hannah Arendt. Arendt argues that the essence of politics is speech (Collingwood's "discussion," I'd suggest). And that contra Mao, political power doesn't emanate from the barrel of a gun; only force comes emanates from a gun. War, then, is the antithesis of democracy. Instead, political power comes from the use of speech to persuade citizens to pursue a common course of action: 

Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together. When we say of somebody that he is "in power" we actually refer to his being empowered by a certain number of people to act in their name. 

Arendt, On Violence (1970, p. 44), quoted in Habermas, "Hannah Arendt's Communications Concept of Power, Social Research (1977).

5.  This bracketed sentence: "For, when it invites the free expression of all political views, it assumes that those who accept the invitation will use it as an opportunity for expressing political views, not as an opportunity for acts of violence" was deleted from Collingwood's manuscript, and the editors don't know why. But I include it because I agree with what he says in that sentence, and in light of the events in Charlottesville and elsewhere, we need to consider what limits upon free speech and expression--if any--we should impose. I'm of the classical liberal bent such that I'd let go anything short of violence, even though I find a sentiment abhorrent. But I'm not sure that this is the best course, and we'd all better consider what alternatives we want to pursue.

Updated 11.11.19

The Trump Diaries 23 Nov. 2016

When I was more buff & had happier thoughts

What's on my mind? Damn, it's Mr. Trump.

I have to say that while I hold Mr. Trump in low regard, he is not without a set of skills. He is shockingly ignorant about the Constitution, American government, and public policy. He has a tiny attention span and speaks in a 4th-grade vocabulary. He doesn't read books or anything of any nuance or complexity. He's addicted to Twitter and easily distracted. He is ill-tempered and easily baited. But he is very accomplished at one thing: he's a master salesman.

His sales pitch, his hype, sold enough "Trump" to get him past the Electoral College minimum. So what does he do now? Here's where it gets interesting. He has just disavowed any intention of pursuing Hillary Clinton further on any criminal charges. (Not that it's his choice, but that's another matter.) During his interview with NYT, he came across as open minded about climate change. He has signaled an infrastructure upgrade plans that mimics (on first glance only) the recommendations of Paul Krugman and others. Trump has not gone after gays or gay marriage, unlike his attacks, explicit and implicit, on Muslims, Mexican-Americans, and immigrants in general. In the meantime, his appointments have been of toadies and cronies. What's going on?

Trump wants to retain power. (Of course, all presidents want to retain and deploy power, the only differences arise from the ways they find to do so and their self-imposed limits, such as honor, shame, the judgment of history, and so on.) To maintain power, Trump has to enlist support from elites; people who run and control institutions that allow our society to function. Elites are (on the whole) better educated, more tolerant, and more grounded in science and other realities about how the world works than most Trump supporters. In fact, like all contemporary politicians, Trump must attempt to bridge these two constituencies. Also, it's now obvious that Trump will remain infatuated with his business operations while seeking to lead the American government. How will he keep all of these interests happy?

In order to do so, you can expect to see a very pragmatic Trump. This pragmatic, power-seeking Trump, will prove tempting, deceiving, and perhaps useful to those who oppose him in principle as a demagog and pretender. "Forget about prosecuting my old friend, Hillary Clinton? No problem" he's in effect saying. He says things potentially reasonable about climate change and he says that we'll dig and drill like crazy for more fossil fuels? No problem! Like any demagogue (and any politician, the difference is one of degree), he'll try to say things that disarm us. The challenge for we American citizens and the rest of the world is to gobble up the tasty bits thrown at us without dropping our guards. I'm hoping that the American public will prove smarter than the average guard dog.

Trump is the master of bait and switch sales. He made a lot of money doing so. (Not to mention having avoided paying taxes on a great deal of it.) But I suspect that Trump has few returning customers. He plays for the one time win, as in a prisoner's dilemma, but running a government creates an iterated (repeating) game, and we (should) learn not to fall for his blandishments. Too many failed to see this before the election, but they are seeing it now. Slowly, deliberately, we must drain the power of this huckster.

Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred by John Lukacs

The past as a lens on our present

I first read John Lukacs’s Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred (2005) in 2006 and then again in 2009. I’ve gone back to it before for some quotes (here, here & here), but for obvious reasons I’ve returned to it again this election season. Lukacs is a sage; not infallible, but certainly wise. There are comments that he makes with which I disagree, but his breadth of knowledge and depth of insight make any disagreements tolerable and call into question my suppositions; a very good thing.

Democracy as a form of rule—rule by the people, or in the name of the people—is a relatively new phenomenon, especially on the scale of the nation-state as it developed in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Before this, the people could influence rule by mob actions or rebellions, but they were not granted any formal voice in affairs. Now, as Tocqueville so presciently described, we live in an age of democracy. (And Tocqueville is Lukacs’s most important source on this topic.) Along with the rise of democracy, we see the development of (classical) liberalism and conservatism (or reaction), depending on the temper of the times and individuals. With the French Revolution, we get the idea of Left and Right, which, according to Lukacs, retains more validity than do current classifications of “liberal” or “conservative.” Conservatives today in the Republican Party are those who promote (at least until this election cycle) rampant capitalism and free-market economic ideology and tend to deplore government (military functions excepted). Liberals (Democrats) favor capitalism with a welfare state; capitalism-lite, the unwanted calories being taken out by a social safety net. But with the rise of Trumpism to the national stage in the form of a demagogue with all the markings of a huckster, we have to consider populism. And here is where Lukacs excels. For populism and nationalism have become two of the most common forms of political belief of that marked the 20^th century and now the 21^st.

Worthy of Tocqueville, Burkhardt & Huizinga

Lukacs draws upon his vast knowledge of 20^th-century history, to distinguish different political movements. The nationalist socialism of Adolf Hitler was the most important and nearly triumphed in Europe. Lukacs explains the difference between nationalism and patriotism (not at all alike) (quote), and he essays the implications of ideas about popular sovereignty, public and popular opinion, snobbery, class distinctions, and the difference between fear and hatred that allow us to appreciate these phenomena.

Here I’ll stop and let Lukacs speak. His sentences, even in the midst of paragraphs, pages, and chapters, have aphoristic quality to them that beg for consideration on a sentence-by-sentence basis:

Is democracy the rule of the people, or, more precisely: rule by the people? No: because it is, really and actually, rule in the name of the people. (5) 

[P]erspective is an inevitable component of reality; and all perspective is, at least to some extent, historical, just as all knowledge depends on memory. (7)  

The “Right,” by and large, feared and rejected the principle of popular sovereignty. The “Left” advocated or supported or at least would propose democracy. It still does. The “Right,” for a long time, was not populist. But now often it is – which is perhaps a main argument of this book. (18)  

Hitler, for one, was an idealist not a materialist: an idealist of a dreadfully German and frightfully deterministic variety, and a believer in the power of ideas over matter. These men know how to appeal to the masses – something that would have filled Maistre with horror. They knew (as did Proudhon but not Marx) that people are moved by (and at times even worship) evidences of power, rather than propositions of social contracts. (24)  

Marx and Marxism failed well before 1989 – not in 1956 and not in 1919 but in 1914. For it was then that internationalism and class consciousness melted away in the heat of nationalist emotions and beliefs. (43)  

[Marx] entirely failed to understand what nationalism (beginning to rise all around him) was. His heavy, clumsy prose droned and thundered against Capitalism and against the State. Hardly a word about the Nation; and, of course, not even the slightest inkling (true, alas, of most political scientists even now) that State and Nation are not the same things. (43)  

This brings us to what is perhaps the fundamental Marxist (and also economic; and often liberal) misreading of human nature. This is the – alas, still near-universally prevalent – belief that the world and its human beings consist of matter, and what the latter think and believe is but the superstructure of material “reality.” But the opposite is true. (45)  

What a governs the world (and especially in the Democratic age) is not the accumulation of money, or even of goods, but the accumulation of opinions. “Opinion governs the world”: a profound truth, uttered by Pascal, more than three hundred and fifty years ago, in the age of the absolutist monarchy of Louis XIV. (45)  

That opinions can be molded, formed, falsified, inflated has always been true. But it is the accumulation of opinions the governs the history of states and of nations and of democracies as well as dictatorships in the age of popular sovereignty. (46)  

Every human event has multiple causes; and the cause-effect relationship in human events does not accord with the cause-effect relations in mechanical causality. And it is really not enough to ascertain the pathogenesis of events (as, too, in the case of physical illness); we must now attempt to find something about their etiology. (78)  

[T]he history of ideas (indeed of all human thought) is inseparable from the history of words. (117)  

Freedom and freedoms; restrictions of freedoms, the wish – or appetite – for freedom, indifference to freedoms – these are difficult and problematic matters, and perhaps especially during the democratic epoch. To regard freedom simply as an emancipation from chains, as an absence of restrictions is of course insufficient. Aristotle knew that it is more difficult to be free than not to be free. That political freedom does not exhaust the meaning of freedom ought also to be obvious. (129-130)  

That there were, after all, only a small minority of communists worldwide is but one proof of the melancholy human condition: the unwillingness of most people to change their minds, even within the site of clear and definite evidence. (133)  

I put “conservatism” within quotation marks – because there was (and still is) so much in American “conservatism” that it was (and is) not conservative at all. (151)  

As the former liberal meaning of democracy devolves toward populism, the danger of tyranny by the majority arises. . .. The majority is not inherently right for having been a properly elected majority; a majority, like an aristocratic minority, or like a monarch, may be right or wrong; and when it is wrong, to change it or its consequences may be long, arduous, while seeming hopeless. (176)  

[T]he term “P.R.” has become a part of the American vocabulary – and soon a part of many other languages. Ever since then the functioning and the “measuring” of “public opinion” and of its simulation, or manufacture, began to overlap – as in more than one instance the purposes of public relations agents and the pollsters: the generating of publicness, even more than that of “opinion.” Thus the second transportation transformation of the American political system, from popularity contests to publicity contests, had begun. (187)  

In the life of man the decline of his powers in old age more often results in his reversion to infantile habits, to a weakening of physical, and sometimes mental, controls. There may be something similar in the devolution of a people. Again the wisdom of Johan Huizinga, the worthy successor of Tocqueville and of Burkhardt is telling. “Puerileism,” he wrote in the 1920s, is “the attitude of the community whose behavior is more immature than the state of its intellectual and critical faculties would warrant, which instead of making the boy into a man adopts the conduct of that of the adolescent age.” Lamentably enough this is not an imprecise description of recent American presidents – and then some. (191)  

In our times (I wrote for than 20 years ago), toward the end of the Modern Age, the difference – indeed, the increased discrepancy – between frame and honor has become so large that in the characters of presidents and in those of most public figures in all kinds of occupation, the passion for fame has just about obliterated the now remote and ancient sense of honor. (192)  

[A]ll thinking, including imagination, involves and depends on reconstruction; because perception inevitably depends on memory; because all cognition involves, and depends on, recognition. “We live forward; but we can only think backward” (Kierkegaard). (197) 
We have seen that, among other things, “conservative” and “liberal” have lost much, almost all, of their meanings. But “Right” and “Left,” in their widest and deepest sense, still remain with us, especially at their extremes. And now let me state something that may be startling. One of the fundamental differences between extremes of Right and Left is this: in most instances hatred moves the former; fear the latter. (203)  

We have seen that sometime after 1870 that came a change. Nationalism was replacing the older forms of patriotism, and it proved to be an even stronger and more lasting bond for masses people than their consciousness about the struggle of classes. It’s extreme representations and incarnations involve more than a dislike of foreigners. It included a contemptuous hatred of people within their own countries whom such nationalists saw as being insufficiently or even treasonably nonnationalist. This is no longer an aristocratic or even a conservative phenomenon but a populist one. It appeared in a great variety of nations and states; it attracted many revolutionary young; and their opponents soon clear learned to fear them. (204) 
But while hatred amounts to a moral weakness, it can be, alas, often, and at least in the short run, a source of strength. Hence the advantage of the Right over the Left – especially in an age of democratic populism. (209)  

Bernanos: “In the spirit of revolt there is a principle of hatred or contempt for mankind. I’m afraid that the rebel will never be capable of bearing as much love for those he loves as he bears hatred for those he hates.” (As true of elements of the Left is of the Right.) (209)

I’ll stop here, although there’s much more that I could add. But the better course is for you to read the book.