Trump's Undeniable Charm

I so want to ignore Trump, but cannot. His name comes up every day. He's the car wreck you can't look away from.

Yesterday, at the America First Policy Institute Summit in Washington, he outlined his authoritarian vision of his next presidential term.

It was the speech of a crackpot through and through.

And scary as hell.

Yes, Trump is an unlettered buffoon, but he has his certain appeal.

It's the appeal of the reluctant savior, the hero and patriot whose hour has come.

Ours is a “failing nation,” a “cesspool of crime,” he told the crowd of 600. "I have to save our country.”

In March 1940, George Orwell reviewed the first English translation of Hitler's Mein Kampf, overlooking the book and reflecting instead on Hitler's charm.

"Hitler could not have succeeded against his many rivals if it had not been for the attraction of his own personality," Orwell wrote. 

While der Führer promotes a "monstrous vision," "the fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him." Perhaps it's his face, Orwell suggested. 

"It is a pathetic, dog-like face, the face of a man suffering under intolerable wrongs," he wrote. "In a rather more manly way it reproduces the expression of innumerable pictures of Christ crucified, and there is little doubt that that is how Hitler sees himself."

Hitler harbors a personal grievance of unknown origin, Orwell said. His impulse is to avenge himself.

"He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon. One feels, as with Napoleon, that he is fighting against destiny, that he can't win, and yet that he somehow deserves to."

But charm alone isn't Hitler's secret weapon, Orwell wrote. He also knows that all aggrieved people crave vengeance.

"Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don't only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also want struggle and self-sacrifice. Hitler has said, 'I offer you struggle, danger and death,' and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet."

The similarities to Trump are unnerving.

We all don't fling ourselves at his feet, thank goodness, but millions of Americans worship him.

It's that undeniable charm—and the craving for vengeance—that explain Trump’s attraction.

Let's Nix the Shibboleths

Then they said unto him, "Say now Shibboleth," and he said "Sibboleth," and they took him and slew him.

— Judges 12:6

The Miami Herald last month called on progressives to stop using the word Latinx.

"Stop trying to make the term 'Latinx' a thing," the editors wrote. "The so-called 'Latinx community' doesn’t even want to be called Latinx."

It turns out 98% of Latinos don't like the word.

I don't care for it either.

It sounds like a brand of laxative. (I can see the tagline now: Latinx. Pity the stool.)

I don't care for shibboleths in general.

Shibboleths often begin life as genteelisms meant to foster goodwill; but they just as often devolve—quickly—into political passwords.

The word shibboleth (Hebrew for "corncob") comes to us from the Old Testament, where we're told that sentries in Gilead used shibboleth as a watchword, knowing their enemies couldn't pronounce the "h."

I pity the fool who couldn't say shibboleth. He was executed on the spot.

I remember recoiling in horror the first time I heard a speaker say Latinx—not because I had no toilet paper, but because I thought, "Oh, no, here's another angry group to worry about offending."

But enough already!

With the real threats to democracy posed by the right, it's time we speak plainly and candidly—without fear of causing offense.

All this precious progressive "rebranding" has gotten way-too Orwellian.

"Some people love to feel offended because it makes them feel important," novelist Oliver Markus Malloy said. 

"When your only tool is a hammer, suddenly every problem starts to look like a nail. And when the only time you feel relevant is when you claim to be offended, suddenly everything looks offensive.”

He's right.

Let's be blunt and to the point.

Let's nix the shibboleths.

Whigs One, Tories Nothing

Sapere aude (Dare to know).

— Horace

Yesterday marked a big win for the Whigs.

Virginia’s Supreme Court ruled that the governor can remove the Robert E. Lee Memorial from Richmond's Monument Avenue.

In a seven to zero decision, the court cited testimony from historians who said the statue memorializes nothing but the Jim Crow South, a time and place anathema to the majority of Americans today.

"Values change and public policy changes too," the court concluded.

The 60-foot high colossus will be removed from its pedestal and trucked to a warehouse, according to the governor's office.

Throughout English history, the Whigs have stood for dissent (even the Americans who rebelled against the crown in 1775 were called Whigs).

The Tories, on the other hand, have stood for the natural order (the monarchy and aristocracy).

Yesterday, the Whigs won.

I'm no Tory, but when I read the breaking news about the Virginia Supreme Court's decision (on Facebook), I was saddened—saddened to learn that this particular monument would disappear from its place in public.

I read a slew of the Facebookers' comments below the news story (more than 250 of them) and noticed that the overwhelming majority were gleeful about the court's decision and echoed the historians' testimony.

Silly me, I joined in, expressing my sadness about the decision and saying that the monument shouldn't be erased, but allowed to stand as a cultural reminder of America's troubled past.

My comments unleashed a barrage of repudiations. The sameness of the angry comments was striking. Almost all were misinformed. And almost all were circular arguments that sounded like this:

Everything Southerners ever did was a form of Black suppression. Southerners erected the memorial; therefore, the memorial is a form of Black suppression.

I tried to counter-argue—to no avail—that the Robert E. Lee Memorial was unique among all the Confederate monuments, and a special case worth preserving in situ:

The Lee Memorial was erected in 1890. Lumping it in with all the rest of the Confederate monuments built by White Supremacists in the 20th century disregards its unique nature. Confederate veterans paid for it—raising $52 thousand ($1.5 million in today's money)—not to intimidate Blacks, but because they idolized Lee for his self-sacrificing conduct during the war. At its dedication, the speaker said, "Let this monument, then, teach to generations yet unborn these lessons of his life! Let it stand, not as a record of civil strife, but as a perpetual protest against whatever is low and sordid in our public and private objects."

But—no more than you can fight city hall—you can't argue with an angry Whig mob (just ask George III). It will only respond with Whiggishness.

Whiggishness insists that history represents unfolding progress—progress toward perfect equality, the end of hierarchies, and the triumph of liberal democracy.

Whigs believed this in the 19th century, as did Hegel and Marx.

Whiggishness is also a form of presentism, a foolishness known to historians as the nunc pro tunc (now for then) fallacy.

Presentism projects our current values and ideas onto the past, condemning people who preceded us for not sharing those values and ideas.

Presentism, for example, condemns Union physicians for not knowing germs spread diseases (they thought gases did) and Confederate veterans for idolizing Robert E. Lee (they weren't woke to the fact that, in defending the Confederacy, he was defending slavery).

I'd love to believe Whiggishness were true; but I cannot. History is full of dead ends, mistaken beliefs, failed theories, and lost causes.

It's why I hate to see history—and this particular memorial—erased. 

Sapere aude.

UPDATE, SEPTEMBER 8, 2021: The statue of Lee was removed today.

Believing isn't Knowing

Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time,

but it ain't goin' away.

— Elvis Presley

Wisconsin pharmacist and flat-earther Steven Brandenburg is in deep kimchi for destroying 500 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine. He insists the vaccine contains a microchip designed by eugenicists. (He also insists the sky is a shield deployed by the federal government to prevent us from seeing God; but that's another matter.)

British judges call Brandenburg's willful ignorance "blinkered," "blind-eye" or "Nelsonian" knowledge, after Lord Nelson's brave deceit. When faced with a hostile force, the admiral would hold his telescope to his blind eye and announce that he saw no enemy ships.

In the US, we like to say, "ignorance of the law is no defense." In the UK, the principle is better stated: "It is dishonest for a man deliberately to shut his eyes to facts which he would prefer not to know. If he does so, he is taken to have actual knowledge of the facts to which he shut his eyes."

Do we have the right to shut our eyes to facts and believe whatever we want?

Right now, right-wingers say we do; but that's bullshit.

Beliefs only aspire to truth; they don't entail it. Believing isn't knowing. Earth might be flat, but isn't. The vaccine might be microchipped, but it isn't. The sky might be a shield, but it isn't. It's absurd to hold any of these beliefs, as it's absurd to say, "It's raining, but I don’t believe it's raining." Believing it isn't raining isn't authoritative. The rain is.

I really don't care how you came to your asinine beliefs, Mr. Brandenburg. Maybe their source is your crazy uncle Cal; your born-again minister; your loser drinking buddies; the voices in your head; an angel named Jack; Jim Carrey; or Q. All I care about is that your asinine beliefs denied 500 people their vaccinations.

Your beliefs aren't only false, they're irresponsible and morally repugnant. You're not entitled to them.

You're woefully willfully ignorant.