{"id":5877,"date":"2017-01-10T05:58:59","date_gmt":"2017-01-10T05:58:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/01\/10\/what-exactly-is-trumpism\/"},"modified":"2017-01-10T05:58:59","modified_gmt":"2017-01-10T05:58:59","slug":"what-exactly-is-trumpism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/01\/10\/what-exactly-is-trumpism\/","title":{"rendered":"What Exactly is Trumpism?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another excellent column<\/a> by VDH.  Excerpt:<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump admires people who make money. He doesn\u2019t buy that those, to take one example, with Ph.D.s and academic titles could have made money if only they had wished\u2014but for lots of reasons (most of them supposedly noble) chose not to. For Trump, credentialed academic expertise in anything is in no way comparable to achievement in the jungle of business.<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead, in Trump\u2019s dog-eat-dog world, only a few bruisers make it to the top and the real, big money \u2014 the ultimate barometer of competence. He sees the \u201cwinners\u201d as knights to be enlisted in behalf of the weaker others. He might not quite say that a Greek professor [a professor of Greek] is inherently useless, and he might not worry much about preserving the ancient strands of Western civilization. But he might remind us that such pursuits are esoteric and depend on stronger, more cunning and instinctual sorts, whose success alone can pay for such indulgences. Without Greek professors, the world can still find shelter and fuel; without builders and drillers, there can be no Greek professors. Brain surgery and guided missiles both require lots of money without which decline is inevitable.<\/span><\/p>\n

……………………<\/span><\/p>\n

There is an important truth here.  The life of the mind is a noble and magnificent thing, and philosophy is the noblest pursuit of them all.  The vita contemplativa<\/em> is an end in itself and the vita activa<\/em> its handmaiden.  <\/span><\/p>\n

But the spaces of serenity and contemplative repose must be secured by "cunning and instinctual sorts," the rude men who enforce the law and defend us from the barbarians within and the warriors who defend us from the barbarians without.  And none of this is possible without the "builders and the drillers."<\/span><\/p>\n

We intellectuals have a certain amount of justified contempt for the businessmen who know the price of everything  and the value of nothing.  We are disgusted by the vulgarity, ostentation, and ignorance of types like Trump.  And they return the 'compliment.' The truth is that we need each other's virtues.<\/span><\/p>\n

We need a man like Trump in the White House now after the disasters both foreign and domestic perpetrated by an adjunct law professor and community organizer with no experience of the real world whose only credentials are a gift of gab and a dark skin pigmentation. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another excellent column by VDH.  Excerpt: Trump admires people who make money. He doesn\u2019t buy that those, to take one example, with Ph.D.s and academic titles could have made money if only they had wished\u2014but for lots of reasons (most of them supposedly noble) chose not to. For Trump, credentialed academic expertise in anything is … Continue reading “What Exactly is Trumpism?”<\/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":[306,290,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism-and-quietism","category-life-of-the-mind","category-social-and-political-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5877","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=5877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5877\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}