{"id":2248,"date":"2022-01-15T03:07:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-15T03:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2022\/01\/15\/disingenuousness\/"},"modified":"2022-01-15T03:07:00","modified_gmt":"2022-01-15T03:07:00","slug":"disingenuousness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2022\/01\/15\/disingenuousness\/","title":{"rendered":"Disingenuousness"},"content":{"rendered":"

One politician accuses another of being disingenuous. But isn't such an accusation itself disingenuous inasmuch as disingenuousness is itself necessary for polite, politic, civil, political<\/em> behavior? Could one have diplomacy and  civility without fakery and phoniness?  Perhaps the greatest diplomatic line of all time was uncorked by Ronald Reagan in his confrontation with Mikhail Gorbachev, he of the Evil Empire: "Trust, but verify!" <\/span><\/p>\n

The Reagan riposte makes sense diplomatically but not semantically. If I trust you, I do not verify what you say or do. If you think otherwise, then you do not know  what 'trust' means.<\/span><\/p>\n

One root of Trump hatred is his refusal or inability to play the political game in the conventional way. In a world that runs on appearances, social success demands more than a modicum of fakery, dissembling, white lies, and such.  If Trump could learn to play the game in a more conventional way, but without any reduction in the size and efficacy of his political cojones, he would be unstoppable.<\/span><\/p>\n

But this world in which there is more seeming than being is also a world of severe limitations.  You cannot expect a man of action with a popular appeal to be also sensitive, articulate, refined, and literary. And vice versa. Those who are the latter tend to be of the milquetoast sort.  Someone as pr\u00e9cieux<\/em>, as 'precious,' as Bill Kristol is not cut out to lead.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Preciosity does not suit the populist.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One politician accuses another of being disingenuous. But isn't such an accusation itself disingenuous inasmuch as disingenuousness is itself necessary for polite, politic, civil, political behavior? Could one have diplomacy and  civility without fakery and phoniness?  Perhaps the greatest diplomatic line of all time was uncorked by Ronald Reagan in his confrontation with Mikhail Gorbachev, … Continue reading “Disingenuousness”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,43,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-predicament","category-political-language","category-political-psychology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2248\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}