Month: May 2024

A Question about Donald Trump

Things are getting interesting. How long until we collapse into hot civil war? The replacement of the rule of law with the rule of lawfare is a bad sign. The following repost, slightly redacted, is from January 2022, and more relevant that ever.

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This from a reader:

It would be very interesting to hear your take on Trump — why do you think that his leadership of the country, despite obvious personality flaws, is less risky for the US and the world than a reasonable alternative? Yes, the ideological, thoughtless, and totalitarian far-left is dangerous, but isn't unprincipled, pugilistic and me-and-my-family first leadership any better? Is your thinking driven by "the lesser of two (or three) evils"?
1) I avoid talk of the lesser or least of evils. I prefer to speak of the better or the worse. 
 
2) Politics is not theoretical; it is practical. There is political theory, of course, and it divides into political science (empirical and non-normative) and political philosophy (normative). But politics is neither of the two, despite the fact that politics is informed by political theory. Politics is a practical game! It is not mainly about having the right views. That does no good unless one can implement them. And no one with practical sense lets the best become the enemy of the good. Politics is a matter of better or worse, not perfect or imperfect.  Politics is about accomplishing something in the extant suboptimal circumstances with the best implementable ideas.
 
3) And which ideas are those? The ideas, values, and principles of the Founders. They arrived as close as anyone ever has to a sound and viable political theory. 
 
4) Now if you accept (2) and (3), then the choice is clear: you support Trump over Hillary, and Trump over Biden. For Trump, unlike Hillary and Biden,  supports those values and not just with words. He proved his support for them in the teeth of vicious opposition by pseudo-cons and leftists alike  in his four years as POTUS.  A long list of his accomplishments could be inserted here. To mention just one, and a very important one: the SCOTUS appointments.
 
5) If you complain about Trump's character, I will agree that he is flawed but go on to point out that the same is true of Hillary and Biden.  Character-wise, either the three are on a par, or the two Democrats are worse. This fact is invisible to many because Hillary and Biden are professional politicians deeply practiced in the arts of deception: mendacious to the core, they know how to hide their flaws, faults, and foibles.  But anyone with life-experience and knowledge of human nature can see that Biden is a fraud and a phony rooted in no principle except that of  the promotion of himself and his family's interests. The same goes for Hillary to a lesser extent. But as I said, they know how to don masks and play the game. Trump, on the other hand, crudely lets it all hang out. He tells you what he thinks. He is blunt, brusque, boorish, and sometimes pointlessly brutal. (I am thinking of that nasty slur he hurled against Carly Fiorina.) He probably knows that his alpha-male strut and swagger is off-putting to many, but he refuses to play the game.
 
6) What decides the question for me is that Trump alone supports the American system of government whereas this is plainly not the case with Hillary or with Biden who is the puppet of puppet masters out to undermine the American system.  That should be blindingly evident to anyone who has been paying attention.
 
7) There comes a time when a corrective is needed, an outsider self-powered, un-owned, and unafraid to kick the asses of the Dementocrats to his Left and expose the fecklessness of the cuckservatives to his Right.  A corrective and a clarifier. No more of the usual Left versus Right. The battle for the soul of America is now a contest between the borderless globalism of the greedy elites and an enlightened nationalism, populist and patriotic.  Hillary/Biden versus The Donald, to personify it.
 
But 'the virtuous'  and the upholders of 'norms' are too scrupulous to rouse the people against their tyrants.

Here:

Describing Wilkes and two of his allies, Walpole wrote, “This triumvirate has made me often reflect that nations are most commonly saved by the worst men in [them].” Why? Because, he concluded, “The virtuous are too scrupulous to go the lengths that are necessary to rouse the people against their tyrants.”

Until the coming of The Donald, that had certainly become the case in recent American politics. Until the Orange Menace loosed the fearful lightning of his terrible swift tweets, the “virtuous,” rather battle-fatigued traditional conservative movement—even when controlling both houses of the Congress—had been out-shouted and outmaneuvered by the unholy alliance of a Left-dominated, morally nihilist pop culture and educational establishment, and what is laughably referred to as the “mainstream” media, all nudging an increasingly radicalized Democratic Party further and further to the left.

 

Libertarians Lurching to the Left and Slouching toward Gomorrah

Here:

We were also witnessing the end of the pure libertarian movement.

Cato, possibly in an attempt to become more relevant, embraced the left on many issues – open borders, gay marriage, and transgenderism, for example. When I say they’ve since embraced the left, I don’t mean they pay lip service to the issues; they full-throatedly advocate for them.

Reason, another libertarian think tank (the Reason Foundation) and magazine, is now an outpost dedicated in large part to advocating for prostitution. Don’t take my word for it, take a look for yourself.

The Libertarian Party hasn’t been relevant since the 1980 election, when John Anderson pulled the all-time high of 6.6 percent of the vote. Since then, Libertarians have nominated a series of former politicians and clowns, culminating in Chase Oliver, a left-wing open borders advocate whose only political experience was being a rounding error in a Georgia House race in 2020 and Senate race in 2022.

Oliver, who is gay, supports the right of biological males to compete in girls’ and women’s sports, wants your children exposed to drag queens at local libraries, and enthusiastically supports ranked-choice voting in elections. That’s a long way from the priorities of the old Libertarian Party, which focused mostly on economic theory, limiting government, and staying out of war.

Today, libertarians are those people I saw cheering Obama’s win.

After Oliver’s nomination, the Cato Institute’s homepage asked, “What’s Donald Trump Doing at the Libertarian Party Convention?” The sub-headline on their homepage read, “The Libertarian Party has always stood for personal liberty, economic liberty, and constitutional rights, but the most prominent speaker at its convention opposes all those things. Why are they doing it?”

On what planet is Donald Trump “opposed” to personal or economic liberty and constitutional rights?

Historians Need Not Apply

At the intersection of academia and wokery lies academentia. 

I have one quibble with Hinderaker. He writes,

But the phenomenon at work here–a huge cadre of well-educated people who think they are entitled to make good money, be treated with deference, and play a significant role in public life, but who in fact are not very employable and whose expectations are doomed to be frustrated–explains a lot about the demented quality of our current culture.

The phrase "well-educated people" is surely out of place. This "huge cadre" is not well-educated by any reasonable, historically-based standard.  But you've heard this sort of thing from me before, for example, here. Tony Flood offers some excellent commentary.

ChatGPT on Me

William F. Vallicella is a contemporary philosopher known for his work in metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of language. He has written extensively on topics such as existence, identity, time, free will, and the nature of truth. Vallicella is particularly noted for his clear and rigorous analytical style, and he often engages with both classical and contemporary philosophical positions in his writings. He has contributed to numerous academic journals and has authored several books on these subjects.

Not bad! "Several books' is inaccurate. If you count my dissertation I have authored only two books.  Two more are in the works. How might I justify my lack of productivity? 

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 80:

Der Gruss der Philosophen unter einander sollte sein: "Lass Dir Zeit!"
This is how philosophers should greet each other: "Take your time!"

A similar thought is to be found in Franz Brentano, though I have forgotten where he says this:

Wer eilt, bewegt sich nicht auf dem Boden der Wissenschaft.
One who hurries is not proceeding on a scientific basis.

But now I'd better get moving. The clock is running, the time control is sudden death, and the Grim Reaper is my vis-à-vis, his scythe all aglisten and at the ready.

Antonius Block, depicted below and played by Max von Sydow in Ingmar Bergman's Seventh Seal (1957), resembles Ludwig Wittgenstein.

In Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 film The Seventh Seal, actor Max von Sydow, right, portrays Antonius Block, a knight who challenges Death to a chess match.

A Gov’t Subsidy for Seniors’ USCF Dues

Ed Yetman reports:

I don’t know if this is a new high or a new low, but it is something I’ve never seen before. Somehow, USCF has managed to find a way to get the U.S. government to pay membership fees for senior members. That’s right, Uncle Sam wants you to play chess so bad, he’s willing to pay for it. Here are the details:

Uncle Sam pays…of course.

Normally, I would applaud USCF finding such a strange niche and using it to promote USCF membership. But I’m having qualms.

My first concern is this: whenever the government subsidizes something, the subsidy distorts the free-market value. The sky-high cost of college tuition is such an example. USCF membership for seniors will go up, and that will lead, inevitably, to corruption. Also, you subsidize something, you get more of it: how many of these new USCF senior members will never play in a tournament? They will have full voting rights; I’m chary about letting people vote for things they have no stake in at all. Do we want USCF elections to be decided by people who could not care less about tournament chess? Oh wait—we already have that problem.

My second concern is the inescapable mission-creep of such things. How long before we have subsidies for other classes of players, like women and children? What then?

The leadership of USCF is already pretty far away from the traditional tournament player. This will only make it worse.

You're spot on, Ed.

Trump and the ‘Losertarians’

The Libertarian Party is for losers. If you are a conservative who votes Libertarian, you are behaving foolishly. You say you stand on 'principles'? Principles are great. And some of the Libertarian ones are salutary. But principles without power are just paper.  Politics is a practical game. Wise up and get with the program. Don't throw away your vote on unelectables. If it comes down to Trump versus Biden, you must vote for Trump.  Nikki Haley gets it. To paraphrase her recent  endorsement: Trump is  not perfect, but Biden is a catastrophe.

You have heard me say many times that politics is a practical game. I don't mean that it is unserious. Some games are serious; chess is one, life is another.* Life is as serious as cancer, and the wrong people in power can put a serious dent in your living of your life.  You know who these are at the present time.

Politics is not about perfect versus  imperfect, but about better versus worse in the concrete circumstances in which we find ourselves.  That's what I mean when I say that politics is practical. I'm a theoretician myself, and unlikely to do much in the political sphere beyond vote and exercise my free speech rights.  But you must understand the political if you are to have any chance of ameliorative action within the political sphere.  Ameliorative praxis presupposes true theory. Libertarians, standing on 'principle,' have as little understanding of the nature of the political as do integralists. (See my Substack entries on integralism, here and here.) Their respective candidates are unelectable.   

Practically, you are a fool if you let the best become the enemy of the good by supporting candidates the probability of whose election is near zero.  Don't waste your time with third parties, which are nothing more than discussion societies in political drag.

Old Karl said that whereas the philosophers have variously interpreted the world, the point is to change it. He got it backwards. Job One is to understand the world; only then will you have any chance of changing it for the better. I hope you all agree that the commies changed things all right, but for the worse. Pace Barack Hussein Obama, progress is not change; progress is change for the better.  And to repeat myself, in the realm of praxis the realizable better is to be preferred over the unattainable best.

Politico reports here on foolish 'losertarian' opposition to Trump.  

“The vast majority of Libertarian Party members are not happy with this invitation,” said Bill Redpath, a 40-year veteran of the Libertarian Party and a former national party chair who’s helped organize their presidential ballot access for decades. “There are some people who call Trump the most Libertarian president of our lifetimes. That’s utterly ridiculous.”

What is Redpath's point? That Reagan was more libertarian than Trump? Maybe so. But Reagan is long gone. What is practically relevant is that Trump is more libertarian than any other electable candidate at present.   Who will stand up for 2A? Joey B.? RFK Jr.? Gavin Newsom?  2A is the lead that backs up the paper of the other ten. Catch my drift?

Do libertarians really value liberty? Or do they just like to talk?  In his address at the Libertarian National Convention, Trump said that if the libertarians are not happy with their usual 3% of the vote, they should nominate or at least vote for him. They nominated some unknown by the name of Chase something.  Oh yes, Chase Oliver. I'm already having trouble remembering a name I first heard two days ago.

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*Bobby Fisher famously said, "Chess is life." But we needn't go that far!

UPDATE (5/29) Walter E. Block: Libertarians should vote for Trump. https://www.wsj.com/articles/libertarians-should-vote-for-trump-4ef84994?mod=opinion_lead_pos8 But of course! Block has his head screwed on Right even if he is a libertarian.

If we pull the lever for Mr. Trump in these swing states, we may get a slightly more libertarian president and help free Mr. Ulbricht. If we vote Libertarian everywhere else, we make a statement and help preserve our ballot access.

Some Libertarians find Mr. Trump unacceptable on grounds of principle. True, he is no libertarian, but Mr. Biden—the wokester, the socialist, the interventionist—is much further from us on the political-economic spectrum than Mr. Trump.

Others are put off by Mr. Trump’s obnoxious behavior. He engages in name-calling. He puts ketchup on filet mignon.

Mr. Trump grew up in Queens. I’m roughly his contemporary and come from Brooklyn. I assure you that everyone in New York City is personally unbearable (except Staten Islanders). It is a geographical-genetic disposition. Ignore it. This act of his is mostly tongue-in-cheek. New Yorkers actually have contests to see who is the most insufferable. Prizes are given out.

Dylan Turns 83

Scott Johnson of Powerline offers a couple of thoughtful retrospective pieces.

Not Dark Yet

Chimes of Freedom

Can one get tired of Dylan? That would be like getting tired of America. It would be like getting to the point where no passage in Kerouac brings a tingle to the spine or a tear to the eye, to the point where the earthly road ends and forever young must give way to knocking on heaven's door.

The scrawny Jewish kid from Hibbing Minnesota, son of an appliance salesman, was an unlikely bard, but bard he became. He's been at it a long, long time, and his body of work is as vast and as variegated as America herself. We old fans from way back who were with him from the beginning are still finding gems unheard as we ourselves enter the twilight where it's not dark yet, but getting there. But it is a beautiful fade-out from a world that cannot last.

Thanks, Bob, it wouldn't have been the '60s without you. 

A Use for Bullet Chess

Bullet is faster than Blitz. I've been playing over at Lichess: two-minutes with a one second increment, sudden death. I die a lot, but like Phoenix rise from my ashes to play again. The fastest bullet games are one minute per side, no increment.

What's the use of it?  I count six uses.

1) It wakes me up. I out-monk the monks when it comes to early arisal from the bed of sloth. This morning I got up at 12:20 AM. (Usually I arise at 1:30) So by 4:30 I needed a second cup of java, but even that didn't turn the trick. So I logged on to Lichess and blasted out two bullet games, winning one, losing the other. And now I'm bangin' on all eight. 

2) It gets me over a temporary writing hurdle. I hit a sag. Inspiration fails. How do  I push this line of thought further? Stymied, I fire up the chess engine, bang out some games, and Seldom Seen Slim is back in the saddle, inspiration restored. I find my way forward.

3) It is good mental exercise.  Exercise yourself every which way every day: mentally, physically, spiritually, morally. Mens sana in corpore sano, et cetera.

4) It is a challenge. The strenuous life is best by test. 

5) It's fun. A little fun never hurt anybody.

6) It distracts me from what the filthy Dems and their media enablers are doing to the country. Chess is an oasis of sanity in an insane world. To swap out the metaphor, chess is the perfect drug, especially when enhanced by consumption of those less-than-perfect drugs, caffeine and nicotine.