Political Philosophy and Current Events

I want to start another thread of discussion – with no one but myself, sadly – about politics, as my home country is teetering on the edge of an abyss.

 

Background

  My home country is de facto in a state of civil war – divided somewhat by region but more by class, religion, level of education, rural vs. urban, race, and other factors. Most importantly by class. There has been some violence, but the potential for violence remains mostly under the surface at this point. By civil war I mean that supporters of Trump have rejected the basic constitutional system (elections, rule of law, independent judiciary, free and objective media) in favor of a pop-fascist cult of personality and a regime change to something like Erdogan's regime in Turkey, the Orban regime in Hungary, or (most clearly) the Putin regime in Russia. Whatever the differences in Trump’s base, they agree on this. The so-called MAGA movement is in open rebellion against the government and constitution of the United States, though in their own minds they are "patriots." (One thinks of Orwell: love means hate, truth means lies, patriot means traitor.)

  This civil war cannot be resolved on the battlefield, like the last one. That means: it cannot be resolved. A permanent cold civil war, until something collapses, until some disaster mixes things up again and hopefully we can start anew. Perhaps it is a just punishment for our hubris over the collapse of the USSR. Certainly, it is very satisfying to people like Putin who were part of the Soviet regime and lived through its collapse.

   More concretely, that means they want to control the media – to make pro-Trump media like Fox the only source of information; they want to control the justice system: Trump-friendly judges (e.g. the Supreme Court is almost there) who will rule based on Trump’s will rather than any objective application of the law); legislators blindly loyal to the leader; and a military and intelligence service that subordinates itself not to a constitution but to the leader’s will. (Of course, the leaders of such regimes are the richest people in world, and Trump’s base somehow needs him to be super rich.)

They have formed a cult around an amazingly base character, a pathological narcissist who knows no other value than elevating his ego. Everything is transactional. Security policy: he was rightly impeached for making digging up dirt on his political opponents a condition to release security aid to Ukraine; he actively colluded with Russian intelligence in the 2016 election; he lies so compulsively that it doesn’t even make the news anymore; he ignores facts to create alternative facts, alternative realities for his base – who expects that from him; he is a convicted rapist (ok, he ‘grabbed her pussy’ as he expressed himself in the Hollywood interview) and fraud; he and his family together received billions from foreign governments like Saudi Arabia and China during his Presidency; the pathetic forms his narcissism takes: the golden shoes, the superhero cards, the commercial about God choosing Trump (vomit emoji); the unchristian demonization of other kinds of people, especially the poorest and the non-white; the use of threat against opponents, from verbal abuse to unleashing his attack dog supporters on them; above all, the attempt to overthrow the government – continuing – of which the attack on the Congress by a violent mob was just one act. He is either a creature or a partner of Putin, sharing the goal of sowing chaos in the country. He is a traitor. That is who 77 million Americans voted for in 2020. That is the choice of millions more today. As he said – one of the few true things he has ever said: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn't lose any voters, okay?”

  A large portion of Americans live in an absurdly small epistemological bubble tightly policed by an echo chamber, controlled mostly by Trump (and Putin) through Fox and even worse media outlets and of course the social media algorithm. They already have the totalitarian power to construct reality for their base, and thus to control the thoughts and feelings of their base – or probably confirm them, since if Fox, for example, started disseminating truths that punctured the bubble, its audience would find another echo chamber. Over 40% of Americans live in a fantasy world – not counting those of the so-called “WOKE” side who also live in a fantasy world. His control over them is probably at least as great as Hitler’s over Germans at the height of his powers. Of course, the rest, whatever their differences, see this from the outside with amazement, frustration, and disgust, but nothing anyone can say or do will penetrate the bubble. These people are as isolated and insulated – by their own choosing – as any member of the Koresh cult (Trump began his campaign symbolically in Waco). They are the basis of Trump’s power.

 

The consequences have been severe.

·        The undermining of the judicial system. A jury doesn’t count for the Trump world unless it consists of Trump cult members. A jury of people who are not in the cult is not a ‘jury of peers’. Judges outside the cult are enemies by definition. For them, Trump’s indictment and pending trials are show trials, equivalent to an American being tried in a court set up by Lenin’s Soviet Union. They don’t recognize the legitimacy of the American judicial system – unless they get a judge or jury who will rule in their favor. The rule of law has been compromised. The Supreme Court has just today exposed themselves as Trump hacks and have lost - also because of their corruption (clients of right-wing billionaires) - lost all legitimacy. 

 ·        Elections can no longer serve as the only legitimate way to form the government. For the Trump cult, elections are only valid if they win. Thus we don’t have a true election. For Trump supporters elections are one tool among others to reach the goal of a regime change.

·        Our bedrock alliances have been undermined. Biden and any Democratic Party leader will honor them. As long as a Democrat is in the White House and the Democrats control Congress, our deterrent power prevents Russia (and thus China) from isolating my country by annexing Europe to its sphere of influence (unless, of course, countries like Germany and France merged and acquired enough military power to be deterrents in their own right – improbable). No NATO country, no ally can place its security on who controls Congress or who is in the White House. Thus even though the Democrats control the White House and Congress, a small minority of Trump’s people can cause us to betray Ukraine, exposing an alliance with us as unreliable. After the War, both parties, for all their differences, supported the alliance. European countries could rely on that. Now, with the Trump civil war, no country can rely on us. That has created a fundamentally different international system, one fraught with insecurity, on in which we are increasingly isolated – much to the delight of dictators like Putin (Trump’s boss or partner, I am not sure which).

·        Politics is negated. Every elected representative is absorbed by the civil war, and can no longer afford to use judgment about politics. Everything must be weighed on one scale:  does it help or hinder Trump in his bid to replace the traditional government system with a kind of pop-fascism.

Against this background, I want to reflect in future entries on politics in general, and US politics (and history) in particular.

   One of the most frustrating aspects of politics parallels one of the most interesting aspects of philosophy: the difficulty of communication between people inhabiting incommensurable philosophies – since people in the Thomist world version, say, and people in the Marxist world version, for example, would also have a difficult time communicating, even if not so difficult as would someone in a cult with an outsider. In philosophy, no bubble can be self-contained and the echo chamber doesn’t function: that is, there are no bubbles in philosophy, and the only echo chamber is defined by the outer limit of reason. There are only horizons in philosophy. As a Thomist, say, as someone who has embraced a definite philosophy of life, a man may have a different conception of reality, human nature, reason, knowledge, politics, culture, and art from a Marxist, as someone who loves wisdom (and thus truth) I must be willing to think I could be mistaken on some point, and thus willing to take seriously some other philosophy of life can offer me insights. But again, since the Thomists and the Marxists do not even conceive of reason and responsible conversation in the same way, there are challenges.

  But with a cult – like the Trump bubble – the first commandment is to maintain the bubble at all costs. Philosophy, conversation is not possible – another devasting consequence of the civil war, since politics in its pure form is authentic communication (authentic: oriented to truth). They are protected, insulated against reality. You don’t puncture the bubble of a cult by using reason, which is by definition that capacity in us that reaches out of our fantasy lives to reality.

   I have always been critical of the US system and my criticisms remain. But it is now a choice between the system I criticize and a qualitatively worse system. Liberal-capitalism I am no big fan of; fascist style dictatorship is something to fight. 

    Therefore, though I like to converse with people who see the world differently than with people who see the world like I do, the people I would most like to have a conversation with will not be available. Indeed, I doubt from my side it would be any more possible to have a conversation with a Trumpist than for a geologist or a physicist to converse with a flat earther. Marxism and Thomism are both serious philosophies. Classical liberalism is a serious political philosophy. MAGA is not a serious political philosophy – it is flat earthism compared to classical liberalism, socialism, or Burkean conservativism, say. Still, I would try it.

   What I want to do is political philosophy, practical philosophy and more general philosophy. And relative to a cult, that puts me in a bubble. That says something important about human finitude.