Third parties are discussion societies in political drag. Few are the exceptions, and they prove the rule. But feel free to join one, and talk, talk, talk. Just be sure that when it comes time to vote, you vote for electable candidates. Otherwise you throw away your vote. You say your vote is a protest? Few will know, and none will care. Politics is a practical game, not a futile exercise in virtue-signaling.
Category: Politics
Lie or Exaggeration or Bullshit? Politics in an Age of Bullshit
A redacted re-post from 30 November 2016
………………………………..
Over the weekend, Donald Trump bragged in signature style that he “won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” Lefties are calling the statement a lie. But it is no such thing. In the typical case, a lie is a false statement made with the intention to deceive. In the typical case, one who lies knows the truth, but misrepresents it to his audience out of a desire to deceive them. But no one knows the truth-value of Trump's braggadocious conditional. It could be true, but neither Trump nor anyone else has any evidence of its truth. Although verifiable in principle, it is not practically verifiable.
When lefties call a statement a lie which is not a lie should we say that they are lying about what it is?
Was Trump exaggerating when he made his remark? That's not right either.
I think what we have here is a species of bullshit in the sense pinned down by a noted philosopher. According to Harry Frankfurt, a statement is bullshit if it is
. . . grounded neither in a belief that it is true nor, as a lie must be, in a belief that it is not true. It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth — this indifference to how things really are — that I regard as of the essence of bullshit." (emphasis added)
Professor Frankfurt has a fine nose for the essence of bullshit. The bullshitter is one who 'doesn't give a shit' about the truth value of what he is saying. He doesn't care how things stand with reality. The liar, by contrast, must care: he must know (or at least attempt to know) how things are if he is to have any chance of deceiving his audience. Think of it this way: the bullshitter doesn't care whether he gets things right or gets them wrong; the liar cares to get them right so he can deceive you about them.
Now if the bullshitter does not care about truth, what does he care about? He cares about himself, about making a certain impression. His aim is to (mis)represent himself as knowing what he does not know or more than he actually knows. Frankfurt again:
. . . bullshitting involves a kind of bluff. It is closer to bluffing, surely than to telling a lie. But what is implied concerning its nature by the fact that it is more like the former than it is like the latter? Just what is the relevant difference here between a bluff and a lie? Lying and bluffing are both modes of misrepresentation or deception. Now the concept most central to the distinctive nature of a lie is that of falsity: the liar is essentially someone who deliberately promulgates a falsehood. Bluffing too is typically devoted to conveying something false. Unlike plain lying, however, it is more especially a matter not of falsity but of fakery. This is what accounts for its nearness to bullshit. For the essence of bullshit is not that it is false but that it is phony. In order to appreciate this distinction, one must recognize that a fake or a phony need not be in any respect (apart from authenticity itself) inferior to the real thing. What is not genuine need not also be defective in some other way. It may be, after all, an exact copy. What is wrong with a counterfeit is not what it is like, but how it was made. This points to a similar and fundamental aspect of the essential nature of bullshit: although it is produced without concern with the truth, it need not be false. The bullshitter is faking things. But this does not mean that he necessarily gets them wrong. (emphasis added)
When did the Age of Bullshit begin in American politics? Perhaps with the inauguration of Bill Clinton. But it really gets underway with Barack Obama. Obama is the shuck-and-jive precursor of Trump. So let's recall some of his antics.
As Frankfurt points out, the essence of bullshit is a lack of concern for truth. But truth and consistency are closely related notions. Two statements are consistent (inconsistent) just in case they can (cannot) both be true. Now I do not know if there are any cases of Obama contradicting himself synchronically (at a time), but there are plenty of examples of him contradicting himself diachronically. He said things as a senator the opposite of which he says now. Victor Davis Hanson supplies numerous examples in Obama as Chaos:
. . . when the president takes up a line of argument against his opponents, it cannot really be taken seriously — not just because it is usually not factual, but also because it always contradicts positions that Obama himself has taken earlier or things he has previously asserted. Whom to believe — Obama 1.0, Obama 2.0, or Obama 3.0?
When the president derides the idea of shutting down the government over the debt ceiling, we almost automatically assume that he himself tried to do just that when as a senator he voted against the Bush administration request in 2006, when the debt was about $6 trillion less than it is now.
The problem here is not merely logical; it is also ethical: the man is not truthful. Truth, falsity, consistency, inconsistency pertain to propositions, not persons. Truthfulness, deceitfulness, lack of concern for truth and consistency — these are ethical attributes, properties of persons. Obama the bullshitter is an ethically defective president. When Nixon lied, he could be shamed by calling him on it. That is because he was brought up properly, to value truth and truthfulness. But the POMO Obama, like that "first black president" Bill Clinton, apparently can't be shamed. It's all bullshit and fakery and shuckin' and jivin'. There is no gravitas in these two 'black' presidents, the one wholly white, the other half-white. Everything's a 'narrative' — good POMO word, that — and the only question is whether the narrative works in the moment for political advantage. A narrative needn't be true to be a narrative, which is why the POMO types like it. Hanson has Obama's number:
But a third explanation is more likely. Obama simply couldn’t care less about what he says at any given moment, whether it is weighing in on the football name “Redskins” or the Travyon Martin trial. He is detached and unconcerned about the history of an issue, about which he is usually poorly informed. Raising the debt ceiling is an abstraction; all that matters is that when he is president it is a good thing and when he is opposing a president it is a bad one. Let aides sort out the chaos. Obamacare will lower premiums, not affect existing medical plans, and not require increased taxes; that all of the above are untrue matters nothing. Who could sort out the chaos?
[. . .]
The media, of course, accepts that what Obama says on any given day will contradict what he has said or done earlier, or will be an exaggeration or caricature of his opponents’ position, or simply be detached from reality. But in their daily calculus, that resulting chaos is minor in comparison to the symbolic meaning of Obama. He is, after all, both the nation’s first African-American president and our first left-wing progressive since Franklin Roosevelt.
In comparison with those two facts, no others really matter.
SOTU #3: President Trump in Fine Form
Donald J. Trump did a great job with his third State of the Union address last night. He took the high ground and demonstrated that he can rise to the occasion when necessary. He made no mention of his impeachment by the House or his expected acquittal by the Senate which will be fait accompli by the end of today. There was also no mention of the Democrats, their witch hunts, or their obstructionism. He cleaved to the positive the whole time, listing his many accomplishments, both domestic and foreign. Promises made; promises kept; Nancy wept. Or rather grimaced.
45 sounded all the right notes on the rule of law, sanctuary jurisdictions, illegal immigration, socialism, abortion, religious liberty, and Second Amendment rights. He said the things that need saying, the very things that Milque-Toast Mitt and the rest of the go-along-to-get-along Republican pseudo-cons are afraid to say. He offended all the right people, including Speaker Pelosi behind him and, to his right, the pouting and sullen girly-girl House Democrats all in white as they were last year, putting their female tribalism on display.
The Orange Man continued in the tradition inaugurated by the great Ronald Reagan in 1982 by honoring ordinary citizens. (Do you remember Lenny Skutnick, who plunged into the icy Potomac to rescue an Air Florida flight victim, and was honored in 1982 by Reagan?)
But the high point of the accolades was President Trump's bestowal of the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Rush Limbaugh who was recently diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. Limbaugh is the prime mover behind conservative talk radio which intellectually obtuse and morally defective 'liberals' insist on calling 'hate radio' thereby demonstrating their failure to grasp the distinction between hate and dissent and the important role dissent plays in a healthy republic.
This blogger enjoyed the 70 or so minute speech immensely. His enjoyment was marred only by his having to look at Nancy Pelosi making faces, chewing her dentures, and looking like the dingbat she is.
And did you notice how, at the end of the speech, Pelosi tore her copy of the speech transcript in half in front of the whole country? What a nasty, passive-aggressive joke she is! She will end her career on a very sad note. And it will be quite a moral struggle for this blogger to contain his Schadenfreude.
What the 2020 Election is About
"More than anything, this election is about President Trump." (Mara Liasson, NPR, 2/2/2020)
Not so! The election is a key engagement in the battle for the soul of America. It is not so much about Trump as it is about the defense of our constitutional republic. The Democrat party, in the control of the hard Left, aims to subvert our constitutional order. They are taking aim at the Electoral College, the Second Amendment, and the First as well. For a leftist, dissent from their positions is 'hate speech.' The Democrats have become illiberal. Mirabile dictu, conservatives are now the new (classical) liberals! We stand for individual liberty; they for an ever-more invasive State apparatus.
The Constitution herself is at risk. For despite their mendacious invocations, the Democrats do not care at all about the Constitution, as is evident from their vicious attempts at blocking the Kavanaugh appointment. They oppose the originalism that alone honors our great founding document. The Democrats are also assaulting bedrock American commitments such as limited government, the presumption of innocence, national sovereignty, the rule of law, the very notion of a citizen and the related distinction between legal and illegal immigration. The political weaponization of the impeachment provision of the Constitution is a spectacularly clear example of their destructive leftism. The Democrats embrace such outrages as sanctuary jurisdictions. I could go on.
So 2020 is not about Trump the man but about the preservation of the Republic. Trump is 'merely' carrying the fight to the Democrats, exposing them for what they are, and teaching fellow Republicans how to develop their political cojones and fight as they must if we of the Coalition of the Sane are to prevail.
Mona Charen, Never-Trumper
The high-minded Mona Charen may be a pearl-clutching Never-Trumper, but I'll say this for her: she hasn't lost her mind to the extent of, say, the bootless Max Boot. That boy has sprung a leak.
Why the Right-Left Divide is Unbridgeable: Three Reasons
One reason is that we differ over values. That's bad. Worse still is that we differ over what is true and what is false. Disagreements about values and norms are troubling but not surprising, but nowadays we can't even agree on what the facts are. Worst of all is that we differ over what truth is and whether there are any truths. The point about values is obvious. I won't say more about it on this occasion. Here are some examples of how we differ over what is true and what is false:
The left believes the president colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. The reality is that there was no collusion. This is the conclusion of the Mueller report, but still, the left doesn’t accept it.
The left is certain President Trump said the neo-Nazis are “very fine people” when referring to the protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia. The right is certain the president didn’t say there are good neo-Nazis any more than he said there are good “antifa” members. When he said there were “very fine people on both sides,” he was referring to those demonstrating on behalf of keeping Confederate statues and those opposed. See “The Charlottesville Lie” by CNN analyst Steve Cortes.
The left believes socialism is economically superior to capitalism. But the reality is that only capitalism has lifted billions of people out of poverty.
These examples are from Dennis Prager. I will now go Prager one better: we don't just disagree about what is true and false; we disagree about whether there is truth is the first place.
The Left is culturally Marxist, and part of that line is that there is no objective truth. What there are are perspectives and power relations. 'True' is whatever perspective enhances the power of some tribe. Thus the abominations 'our truth' and 'my truth.'
We are obviously in deep trouble and it is not clear how to avoid disaster. Hot civil war would be a disaster. But we conservatives are not about to accept dhimmitude. Secession is unworkable. We need to find the political equivalent of divorce. But how to work this out in detail is above my pay grade. And yours too.
The consolations of philosophy, and of old age, are many.
Trump’s Inauguration
Journal entry of 21 January 2017:
A drizzly day yesterday, but memorable. A strong speech by the man. I was moved by it. Ah, but the depth of disagreement!
One acquaintance of mine is in mourning, wearing a black arm band, while another speaks of Inauguration Day as the happiest day of his life. Both men are decent and intelligent. And both are philosophers.
I see Trump as a needed corrective. So I am not much bothered that he is blunt, rude, and unconcerned about the usual pieties and protocols and the niceties of language. What he lacks in gravitas he makes up for in guts. The man displays civil courage.
A corrective to what? To many things. Defeatism for one. "A wall won't keep 'em out; they'll tunnel under it."
A second thing is the overemphasis on feelings.
The Difference between Left and Right Anti-Trump Rage
The Left's blind rage against Trump is not primarily because of the man and his personal style, but because of his threat to their agenda. If Trump had Hillary's ideas and policies, and Hillary Trump's, the Left would have overlooked Trump's personal behavior and supported him in the same way that they overlooked the bad behavior of Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton. They would have dismissed the Access Hollywood tape as locker-room talk in the same way they dismissed Bill Clinton's much worse sexually predatory actions as peccadilloes belonging to his personal life.
The Never Trumpers, on the other hand, hate Trump primarily because of the man he is, and not primarily because of his ideas and policies. They hate him because he is a crude and obnoxious outsider, an interloper, who crashed their party and threatened to upset their cozy world.
Proof of this is that Trump's solid conservative accomplishments mollify the bow-tie brigade not one bit. Their hatred and mindless opposition is in no way reduced by the Gorsuch and Kavanaugh confirmations, the movement of the U. S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the surging stock market, the replacement of NAFTA by USMCA, the low unemployment numbers, the defense of religious liberty, the beefing-up of border security despite vicious Democrat obstructionism, and so on down the list.
Our leftist pals rage, rage against the dying of the blight. 2020 will give them more to rage about.
Subsidiarity as Bulwark against the Left’s Assault on Civil Society
David A. Bosnich, The Principle of Subsidiarity:
One of the key principles of Catholic social thought is known as the principle of subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom. It conflicts with the passion for centralization and bureaucracy characteristic of the Welfare State.
The principle of subsidiarity strikes a reasonable balance between statism and collectivism as represented by the manifest left-ward drift of Democrat administrations such as President Obama's, on the one hand, and the libertarianism of those who would take privatization to an extreme, on the other. The Left is totalitarian by its very nature, and as the Democrat party drifts ever left-ward, it becomes ever more totalitarian and socialist and ever more a threat to individual liberty and the private property that is its foundation.
Subsidiarity also fits well with federalism, a return to which is a prime desideratum and one more reason not to vote for Democrat candidates. 'Federalism' is another one of those words that does not wear its meaning on its sleeve, and is likely to mislead. Federalism is not the view that all powers should be vested in the Federal or central government; it is the principle enshrined in the 10th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Whether or not you are Catholic, if you accept the principle of subsidiarity, then you have yet another reason to oppose the Left. The argument is this:
1) The Left encroaches upon civil society, weakening it and limiting it, and correspondingly expanding the power and the reach of the state. (For example, the closure of Catholic Charities in Illinois because of an Obama administration adoption rule.)
2) Subsidiarity helps maintain civil society as a buffer zone and intermediate sector between the purely private (the individual and the familial) and the state.
Therefore
3) If you value the autonomy and robustness of civil society, then you ought to oppose Obama and the Left.
The truth of the second premise is self-evident. If you wonder whether the Left does in fact encroach upon civil society, then see my post Obama's Assault on the Institutions of Civil Society.
President Trump Delivers a Stinging and Well-Deserved Rebuke to Nancy Pelosi
Hitchens, Horowitz, Clinton, and Impeachment
Christopher Hitchens died on this date in 2011. The synergistic effects of his excessive consumption of smoke and spirits did him in at the tender age of 62. By comparison, David Horowitz is still going strong at 81 churning out books, manning the ramparts, and fighting the good fight. May he live to be 100!
We who live the life of the mind celebrate the longevity of Horowitz while mourning the loss of Hitchens despite the latter's excesses and aberrations. I will quote David Horowitz on Hitchens on Bill Clinton. This is relevant to the current impeachment proceedings against Donald J. Trump. The case for impeaching Clinton was much stronger than the case that was actually brought against him. There is no case at all against Trump.
In his mordantly incisive articles in both Vanity Fair and Salon, Hitchens has demonstrated that the nation's commander in chief cynically and mendaciously deployed the armed forces of the greatest power on earth to strike at three impoverished countries, with no clear military objective in mind. Using the most advanced weaponry the world has ever seen, Clinton launched missiles into the Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq for only one tangible political purpose, to — as Hitchens puts it — "distract attention from his filthy lunge at a beret-wearing cupcake."
Hitchens' claim that Clinton's military actions are criminal and impeachable is surely spot-on. Republicans, it seems, were right about the character issue, and failed only to demonstrate how this mattered to the policy issues the public cares deeply about. Instead they got themselves entangled in legalistic disputes about perjury and obstruction, losing the electorate along the way. In making his own powerful case against Clinton, Hitchens has underscored how Republicans botched the process by focusing on criminality that flowed from minor abuses of power — the sexual harassment of Paula Jones and its Monica Lewinsky subtext — while ignoring a major abuse that involved corrupting the presidency, damaging the nation's security and killing innocents abroad.
[. . .]
Given the transparent morality of Hitchens' anti-Clinton crusade, it is all the more revealing that so many of his comrades on the left, who ought to share these concerns, have chosen instead to turn on him so viciously. In a brutal display of comradely betrayal, they have publicly shunned him in an attempt to cut him off socially from his own community. One after another, they have rushed into print to tell the world at large how repulsed they are by a man whom only yesterday they called "friend," yet whom they now apparently no
longer even wish to know.Leading this pack was Hitchens' longtime colleague at the Nation, Alexander Cockburn, who denounced him as a "Judas" and "snitch." Cockburn was followed by a second Nation columnist, Katha Pollitt, who smeared Hitchens as a throwback to McCarthy-era informers ("Let's say the Communist Party was bad and wrong — Why help the repressive powers of the state? Let the government do its own dirty work."). She was joined by a 30-year political comrade, Todd Gitlin, who warned anyone who cared to listen that Hitchens was a social "poison," in the same toxic league as Ken Starr and Linda Tripp.
Consider the remarkable nature of this spectacle. Could one imagine a similar ritual performed by journalists of the right? Bob Novak, say, flanked by Pat Buchanan and William F. Buckley, pronouncing an anathema on Bill Safire, because the columnist had called for the jailing of Ollie North during the Iran-contra hearings? Not even North felt the need to announce such a public divorce. When was the last time any conservative figure (let alone a gathering of conservatives) stepped forward to declare they were ending a private friendship over a political disagreement?
The curses rained on Hitchens' head are part of a ritual that has become familiar over generations of the left, in which dissidents are excommunicated and consigned to various Siberias for their political deviance. It is a phenomenon normal to religious cults, where purity of heart is maintained through avoiding contact with the unclean. To have caused the left to invoke so drastic a measure, Hitchens had to have violated some fundamental principles of its faith. So what were they?
Read it all. An updated and extended version appears as "Defending Christopher," Chapter 23 of Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes (Spence 1999), pp. 240-248.
Should a Philosopher Care about the Political Situation?
It would seem that a "spectator of all time and existence" (Plato, Republic 486a) ought to care inasmuch as his 'telescope' is located in the world, well within range of the agents of the State, the power of which has rarely been limited, and the malevolence of which has too often swamped the good things some states have done. (The State is a necessary evil.) In the 20th century alone, communists murdered some 100 million, destroyed countless churches and other religious edifices, and replaced philosophy with communist ideology.
You say you could still do philosophy in the gulag? Who are you, Boethius? I am no Boethius.
The philosopher here below must needs be a man of action, a fighter with words and weapons, to some extent at least, to defend the precincts within which alone the free life of the mind and spirit can flourish.
Companion post: The Consolations of Philosophy
Nancy Pelosi and the Divine Spark
Donald Trump famously referred to MS-13 gangsters as "animals." That's not the way I would put it inasmuch as it is an insult to animals who, unlike the gangbangers, are beneath good and evil. But Trump talks like a working stiff and we all know what he meant. Pelosi, however, took umbrage, protesting that the murderous bunch possesses "the divine spark" (her phrase) along with the rest of us. I don't disagree, but I do have a couple of questions for Madame Speaker.
First, Nancy dear, do you think the pre-natal also have the divine spark? If not, why not? Isn't that what your Catholic religion, bits of which you regularly inject into your speeches, teaches? And if the horrific rapes, murders, beheadings, etc. of the MS-13 do not cause them to forfeit the "divine spark," then how it it that a human fetus' lack of development prevents it from having said spark?
Second, as a leftist committed to driving every vestige of religion, or rather Christianity, from the public square, can't you see that it is inconsistent of you to use themes from your Catholic girlhood when it suits you and your obstructionist purposes?
You come across as a silly goose of a dingbat. Or is that just an act to mask your mendacity and subversiveness and Alinskyite disregard of double standards?
When is Politics War?
I have been saying that politics is war. I don't mean to suggest that it is the nature of politics to be war, but only that in the present circumstances it is. When is politics war? When the constitutional order is no longer respected. And that is now in the USA. To mention just three things under assault by the Left: the First Amendment, with its protections of religious liberty and free speech; the Second Amendment; the Electoral College.
The leftist sees politics as war. And so that is how we must see it if we are to meet their attack. It is the foolish conservative, living in the past, hobbled by his virtues and hindered by his decency, who sees politics as a gentlemanly debate by agreed-upon rules under an umbrella of shared principles. There are no such rules, and there is no such umbrella.
What Can a Sane Individual do in the Present Political Situation?
What can an individual do? Not much, but here are some suggestions.
Exercise your rights and in particular your Second Amendment rights; the latter provide the concrete backup to the others. A well-armed populace, feared by the totalitarians, is a strong deterrent without a shot being fired. Money spent on guns, ammo, accessories, and range fees goes to support our cause. Be of good cheer, and hope for the best. But prepare for the worst.
Vote in every election, but never for any Democrat. And don't throw away your vote on third-party losers. The Libertarians are losertarians and the other third parties are discussion societies in political drag. Politically, they are jokes. Politics is a practical business. It's about better or worse, not about perfect or imperfect. Don't let the best become the enemy of the good. Make your vote count — not that any one vote counts for much. Thanks to Trump, the Great Clarifier, there are now real choices. The days of Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee are over.
Vote with your wallet. Contribute to conservative causes, but never give money to leftist causes, organizations, or publication outlets. Did your alma mater ask for a contribution? "Not one dime until you clean up your act." That's what I tell them. PBS and NPR programming is sometimes surpassingly excellent, but to give money to these left-leaning outfits is inimical to your interests as a conservative. Don't be a fool who empowers his enemies.
Vote with your feet. Do you live in a sanctuary crap hole such as California? Leave. But don't come to Arizona, this rattle-snake infested inferno crawling with gun-toting racists. Keep heading East. Move in with Elizabeth Warren. Her 3.5 million dollar pad near Harvard Square has plenty of room.
Punish any leftist 'friends' you may still have by withdrawing your high-quality friendship from them. Let them experience consequences for their willful self-enstupidation. Ceteris paribus, of course.
Finally, show some civil courage and speak out: blog, facebook, tweet. But temper your rhetoric and don't incite violence. That's what they do (Maxine Waters, for example, hiding behind her Black Privilege.) But if you are young and need gainful employment, be careful, be very careful. Never underestimate the mendacity and viciousness of leftists. To them you are a deplorable 'racist.' Truth and morality are bourgeois fictions to them. Power is what they believe in.
Don't retreat into your private life lest you wake up one morning to find that there is no private life.