John G. Messerly's Blog, page 66

Kavanaugh is Obviously Guilty of Sexual Assault

Tarquin and Lucretia by Titian

I hesitate to comment on the current spectacle surrounding the nomination of Bret Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court since my words are unlikely to sway anyone’s mind. Still, let me state how a non-partisan juror or good critical thinker might consider the problem.

Point 1 – Your intuition about who is or isn’t lying is worthless. It has been well-demonstrated that humans are very bad at detecting lying. Instead, they simply superimpose what they want to believe or disbelieve onto whoever they are listening to. So don’t tell me someone seems credible or not. Your intuition here is worthless.

Point 2 – Dr. Ford has little incentive to lie and had a lot of incentive to remain quiet. Mr. Kavanaugh has every incentive to lie.

Point 3 – There is a lot of circumstantial evidence against Kavanaugh. People who knew him as a teenager say he was a frequent drunk; his friend and fellow alleged assaulter Mark Judge wrote a book Wasted: Tales of a Genx Drunk[image error] (which is now almost impossible to buy); there are other allegations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh; etc. (A Yale classmate has also accused him of being a drunk.)

Point 4 – Kavanaugh is a liar. He gave misleading testimony about his knowledge of stolen documents when he was in the Bush White House and about his involvement in judicial nominations. In addition when asked about his yearbook claim to be a “Renate Alumnius,” he pretended that there was no sexual insinuation. This was almost certainly a lie. He also lied by saying that it was legal for him to drink as a high school senior. He was then 17 and in his state the drinking age was 21. And he lied about having no connections to Yale when he was a legacy student. And he lied when he said that references in his yearbook were about a drinking game and flatulence when they were almost certainly about anal sex and sex between two men and one woman. And he lied …

Point 5 – False accusations of sexual assault and/or rape are the exception, not the rule. This is well-established in the scientific literature. The bottom line is that false allegations are probably somewhere between 2% and 10%. For more see:

a) Wikipedia  – False accusations of rape

b) National Sexual Violence Resource Center – False Reporting

c) Stanford University – Myths About False Accusations

Based on this fact alone Kavanaugh is very likely guilty.

Conclusion

If I were a betting man I’d say the chances he assaulted Dr. Ford are about 100 to 1. It’s possible he’s innocent but very unlikely. This may or may not disqualify him from a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, but the fact that he is probably a liar should.

Finally, Kavanaugh wants our sympathy for bad deeds committed as a teenager—which he may deserve—but you can bet he won’t show any mercy to non-white teenagers who plead before him in his court. At them, he will throw the full weight of the law.

Poor Kavanaugh. If denied this seat he will likely go back to sitting on the nation’s highest appeals court or accept a multimillion-dollar salary as a partner in a law firm. Like most entitled rich, white frat boys the law doesn’t apply to him—he only wants to apply it to the rest of us.

Finally, for a persuasive case against Kavanaugh by a conservative, see Jennifer Rubin’s great piece in today’s Washington Post “If we want to protect the Supreme Court’s legitimacy, Kavanaugh should not be on it.”

For more see also:

“Kavanaugh is Lying: His Upbringing Explains Why”

“Here’s Where Kavanaugh’s Sworn Testimony Was Misleading or Wrong”

“At times Kavanaugh’s Defense Misleads or Veers Off Point”

 

Review of Daniel Dennett’s, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea

A reader’s comment on one of my posts provided a good review of Daniel Dennett’s Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life[image error]. Here is Jim Roger’s review.

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DARWIN’S DANGEROUS IDEA is one of those books that should be read slowly and savored – and then re-read again and again. It took me all summer to work my way through the book (I’m a slow reader), but it was a thoroughly enjoyable and thought-provoking experience. Dennett has sharpened my understanding of Darwinian evolution from a vague concept that I learned many years ago in school to a much richer perspective.

While I gained many new insights from the book, perhaps the one that has stuck with me the most is Dennett’s description of natural selection as being a mindless, purposeless, algorithmic process. The feat of traversing through design space from the earliest, simple organisms to the present-day complexity of life was done in a bottom-up manner by little chemical and biological “cranes”. No “skyhooks” lowered by imaginary beings from above were needed. In Dennett’s words (p. 75): “Darwin has offered us an account of the crudest, most rudimentary, stupidest imaginable lifting process – the wedge of natural selection. By taking tiny – the tiniest possible – steps, this process can gradually, over eons, traverse these huge distances.”

Being an engineer, I was intrigued by how often Dennett’s explanations drew on familiar concepts used in engineering and computer science. He even has an entire chapter titled “Biology is Engineering”, in which he states the following (p. 187): “I want to make out the case that the engineering perspective on biology is not merely occasionally useful, not merely a valuable option, but the obligatory organizer of all Darwinian thinking, and the primary source of its power. I expect a fair amount of emotional resistance to this claim. Be honest: doesn’t this chapter’s title provoke a negative reaction in you, along the lines of ‘Oh no, what a dreary, philistine, reductionist claim! Biology is much more than engineering!’?”

Actually, I got quite excited when I saw the title of that chapter!

Dennett does not shy away from trying to correct misconceptions about evolution. Although written back in 1995, with some particular disagreements now consigned to the dustbin of history, his analysis still seems relevant today. In particular, Dennett singled out the popular author Stephen Jay Gould (now deceased). Although Dennett was very complimentary about the many contributions that Gould made, he ultimately felt that Gould often misled and confused the public on what evolution is. Dennett writes about a possible reason for this (p. 265): “The hypothesis I shall defend is that Gould is following in a long tradition of eminent thinkers who have been seeking skyhooks – and coming up with cranes.”

This controversy between Dennett and Gould, over twenty years ago, is OBE at this point. But there are still currently many well-meaning and not-so-well-meaning individuals that confuse and mislead the public about evolution and science in general. After all, it is basic human nature to seek and want to believe in skyhooks dangled by deities. That thesis is much more comforting (and marketable) than the notion that the meaning of life is to be found buried among the cranes. Yet, that latter notion is the net result of Dennett’s uncompromising and precise analysis, which is also like a universal acid in its own right: it eats through one’s misconceptions and cognitive biases and leaves behind a more clear-thinking, rational human being. (Well, I hope that happened to me…)

Of all the well-deserved comments of praise about the book inside the front cover, my favorite is the one from Matt Ridley of The Times (London): “If we had to choose one man to represent Earth in a debating tournament with extraterrestrials, the American philosopher Daniel Dennett would be a prime candidate”. I heartily agree.

Summary of Kant’s Ethics

Kant’s Deontological Ethics 

(You can find my even briefer summary of Kant’s ethics here. However, what follows is probably the minimum you need to have a basic understanding of Kant’s ethics.)

1. Kant and Hume

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), called by many the greatest of modern philosophers, was the preeminent defender of deontological (duty) ethics. He lived such an austere and regimented life that the people of his town were reported to have set their clocks by the punctuality of his walks. He rose at 4 a.m., studied, taught, read, and wrote the rest of the day. He was an accomplished astronomer, mathematician, metaphysician, one of the most celebrated epistemologists and ethicists of all time. Moreover, many consider him to be the crowning figure of the Enlightenment, which celebrated the idea that human reason was sufficient to understand, interpret, and restructure the world. The motto of this great rationalist was “dare to think.”

To understand Kant, we might briefly consider his immediate predecessor David Hume (1711-1776). Hume had awakened Kant “from his dogmatic slumber,” forcing Kant to reconsider his former beliefs.  Hume’s skepticism had challenged everything for which the Enlightenment stood; he was, perhaps, the most consistent skeptic the Western world had yet produced. He argued that Christianity was nonsense, that science was uncertain, that the source of sense experience was unknown, and that ethics was subjective.

Hume believed that moral judgments express our sentiments or feelings and that morality was based upon an innate sympathy we have for our fellow human beings. If humans possess the proper sentiments, they were moral; if they lack such sympathies, they were immoral. Thus, Hume continued the attack on authority and tradition—an attack characteristic of the Enlightenment—but without the Enlightenment’s faith in reason. In particular, he criticized the view that morality was based on reason which, according to Hume, can tell us about facts, but never tell us about values. In short, reason is practical; it determines the means to some end. But ends come from desires and sentiments, not from reason. Hume made these points in a few famous passages: “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions…[Thus]…Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.”

Hume’s skepticism stunned Kant. What of the Enlightenment’s faith in reason? If desire preceded reason and desires aren’t rational, then Enlightenment rationalism was dead. How then can we reestablish faith in reason? How can we show that some passions and inclinations are rational? In his monumental work, The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant attempted to elucidate the rational foundations of both the natural and mathematical sciences, defending reason against Hume’s onslaught. He then turned his attention to establishing a foundation for ethics in The Critique of Practical Reason. If morality were subjective, as Hume thought, then the concept of an objective moral law was a myth. In essence, Kant needed to answer Hume’s subjectivism and irrationalism by demonstrating the rational foundations of the moral law.

2. Freedom and Rationality  

Kant’s philosophy is enormously complex and obscure. Yet, Kant’s basic ideas are surprisingly simple. His main presupposition was his belief in human freedom. While the natural world operates according to laws of cause and effect, he argued, the moral world operates according to self-imposed “laws of freedom.” We may reconstruct one of his arguments for freedom as follows:

Without freedom, morality is not possible.
Morality exists, thus
Freedom exists.

The first premise states that determinism undermines morality. The second premise Kant took as self-evident, and the conclusion follows logically from the premises. But where does human freedom come from? Kant believed that freedom comes from rationality, and he advanced roughly the following argument to support this claim:

Without reason, we would be slaves to our passions
If we were slaves to our passions, we would not be free; thus
Without reason, we would not be free.

Together, we now have the basis upon which to cement the connection between reason and morality.

Without reason, there is no freedom
Without freedom, there is no morality, thus
Without reason, there is no morality.

Kant believed moral obligation derived from our free, rational nature. But how should we exercise our freedom? What should we choose to do? 

3. Intention, Duty, and Consequences  

Kant began his most famous work in moral philosophy with these famous lines: “Nothing in the world—indeed nothing even beyond the world—can possibly be conceived which could be called good without qualification except a good will.” For Kant, a good will freely conformed itself and its desires to the moral law. That is its duty! Nevertheless, the moral law does not force itself upon us, we must freely choose to obey it. For Kant, the intention to conform our free will to the moral law, and thereby do our duty, is the essence of morality.

The emphasis on the agent’s intention brings to light another salient issue in Kant’s ethics. So long as the intention of an action is to abide by the moral law, then the consequences are irrelevant. For instance, if you try valiantly to save someone from a burning building but are unsuccessful, no one holds you responsible for your failure. Why? Because your intention was good. The reverse is also true. If I intend to harm you, but inadvertently help you, I am still morally culpable. Kant gave his own example to dramatize the role intention played in morality. Imagine shopkeepers who would cheat their customers given the opportunity, but who do not only because would be bad for business. In other words, the shopkeepers do the right thing only because the consequences of doing so are good. If they could cheat their customers without any repercussions, they would do so. According to Kant, these shopkeepers are not moral. On the other hand, shopkeepers who give the correct change out of a sense of duty are moral.

The emphasis on the agent’s intention captures another important idea in deontology, the emphasis on the right over good. Right actions are done in accordance with duty; they do not promote values like happiness or the common good. Kant makes it clear that dutiful conduct does not necessarily make us happy. In fact, it often makes us unhappy! We should do the right thing because it is our duty, not because it makes us happy. If we want to be happy, he says, we should follow our instincts, since instinct is a better guide to happiness than reason.

But morality cannot rest upon passions. If it did, morality would be both subjective and relative. For ethics to be objective, absolute, and precise—to be like the sciences—it needs to be based upon reason. Only the appeal to the objectivity of reason allows us to escape the subjectivity of the passions. In summary, a good will intends to do its duty and follows the moral law without consideration of the consequences.

4. Hypothetical Imperatives

But what exactly does reason command? We have already seen how reason commands actions given antecedent desires. If we want a new car, then reason tells us the various means to achieve this end. We can save or borrow the money, pray, enter a raffle, call our mother, or steal a car. But whatever we do, reason only tells us how to pursue the end; it does not tell us which ends are worth pursuing. Commands or imperatives of this sort, Kant called hypothetical imperatives, since they depend upon some desires or interests that we happen, hypothetically, to have.

Kant distinguished between two types of hypothetical imperatives. The type we have been discussing so far, what he called “rules of skill,” demand a definite means to a contingent (dependent) end.  There are also what  Kant called “counsels of prudence,” which are contingent means to a definite end. Kant recognized that happiness was a common end or universal goal for all individuals, but that the means to this end was uncertain. For example, we may think that getting a new car or losing weight will make us happy, but when we get the new car or figure we may still be unhappy. Even though the end is definite, the means to the end are not. Thus, there are no universal hypothetical imperatives because either the ends are contingent or the means to the end are uncertain.

5. The Categorical Imperative

Does reason command anything absolutely? In other words, does reason issue any imperatives which do not depend upon contingent ends or un-certain means? Hume had claimed that reason did not command in this way and that any rational commands depend upon our passions. But if absolute commands exist—commands independent of personal taste—then the essence of the moral law is revealed.

If we think about any law—say temporal relativity—we recognize immediately that law is characterized by its universal applicability. So that, if relativity theory is true, then time is relative to motion everywhere through-out the universe. Similarly, the distributive law of mathematics applies no matter what numbers we insert into it or what planet we are on. Mundane physical laws are similar. Suppose we are asked about the post-operative effects of aspirin. We do not know about the anti-clotting effects of aspirin and believe it should be given after operations. In this example, it seems clear that the truth of the matter does not depend upon us; it depends upon laws governing how human bodies respond to aspirin. Kant believed that the moral law was like this. If there really is a reason why killing innocent people is wrong, then the reason applies universally. It doesn’t matter that we want, desire, or like to kill innocent persons; we violate the moral law by doing so.

Of course, we can say that killing innocent people does not violate the moral law just as we can say that time is not relative to motion, that the distributive law works only on Monday, or that aspirin should only be given after operations. But our statements do not affect these laws; rather, the laws determine the truth of our statements. Kant held that a universally applicable moral law governs human behavior and can be discovered by human reason.

Kant had seized upon the idea of universalization as the key to the moral law. He called the first and most famous formulation of the moral law the categorical imperative: “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” A maxim is a subjective principle of action which reveals our intention. To universalize a maxim is simply to ask, “what if everybody did this?”  We should act according to a principle which we can universalize with consistency or without inconsistency.  By testing the principle of our actions in this way, we determine if they are moral. If we can universalize our actions without any inconsistency, then they are moral; if we cannot do so, they are immoral.

Kant actually advanced five formulations of the categorical imperative. Another famous formulation was: “Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never merely as a means.” This formulation introduces us to the idea of respect for persons. Individuals are not a means to an end; we should not use people. Instead, they are ends in themselves with their own goals and purposes. Whether we use ourself or others, we violate the imperative if we treat any human being without dignity and respect. Certainly, it is true that we all use people to an extent. We use physicians, teachers, nurses, and auto mechanics to get what we want. But there is a difference between paying persons for services and using them merely as a means to your end. In the latter case, we disregard their inherent worth.

6. Perfect and Imperfect Duties

The categorical imperative commands actions in two different ways. It specifically forbids or requires certain actions, and it commands that certain general goals be pursued. The former are called perfect duties, the latter imperfect duties. Perfect duties include: do not lie, do not kill innocent persons, and do not use people. We should never perform these actions! Imperfect duties include: helping others, developing our talents, and treating others with respect. These duties are absolute, but the way we satisfy them varies. There is flexibility in how we help others, treat them with respect, or develop our talents. When we universalize a maxim that violates a perfect duty, we will an inconsistent world. When we universalize a maxim that violates an imperfect duty, we will an unpleasant world.

7. Kant’s Examples

Kant provided four examples—making false promises, committing suicide, developing our talents, and helping others—to demonstrate how the categorical imperative governs human conduct. Consider Kant’s first example, making a false promise. Can we consistently will the principle, “whenever in need of money make a false promise to get it?” We cannot, since a world where everyone acts according to this maxim would be inconsistent. This is easy to demonstrate. In such a world: 1) false promises would be useful because there would be persons to believe them; and 2) false promises would not be useful because, in a short time, nobody would believe them. Such a world is not even possible. On the one hand, it would contain the necessary preconditions for false promises to be successful—people to believe our lies—and, on the other hand, the normal and predictable result of universal false promising would be that no lies would be believed. So it is not just that this world is unpleasant; it is logically impossible!

Consider Kant’s second example. Imagine that we are depressed and contemplate suicide. Our principle of action is “whenever we are depressed we will commit suicide.” Now try to universalize a world in which everyone does this. What would it be like? In such a world: 1) people would exist to commit suicide; and 2) people would not exist to commit the suicides they intend. Such a world is not logically possible. On the one hand, it would contain the necessary preconditions of suicide—live people to commit the act—and, on the other hand, the normal and predictable result of universal suicide would be that everyone would be dead. It is easy to think of other examples. Worlds, where everyone were killers or bank robbers, would be logically impossible in the same way. Kant had demonstrated, at least to his own satisfaction, that these actions were both immoral and irrational!

If we consider the same two actions—making false promises and suicide—in terms of the second formulation of the categorical imperative, we discover that they violate it as well. If we make a false promise to someone, then we use that person as a means to our end. Analogously, if we commit suicide, then we use ourself to achieve some end. When universalization of a maxim is inconsistent or when we use ourself or others, we violate perfect duties. Kant believed that telling the truth and not committing suicide exemplify perfect duties. There are no exceptions to them.

Kant believed we have a moral obligation to develop our talents, which was his third example. Suppose we are comfortable and prefer to indulge ourselves rather than develop our talents. We act according to this maxim: “since we are reasonably well-off, we won’t develop our talents.” Upon reflection, we recognize that failure to develop our talents violates a duty and could not be universalized consistently. For if everyone failed to develop their natural talents, they would not fulfill the purpose for which those talents exist.

Furthermore, he might have added, nothing useful would be accomplished in human society without the development of talent. Yet, Kant never claimed such a world was impossible, unimaginable, or logically inconsistent. Rather, rational persons cannot will this maxim to be a universal law without disastrous and unpleasant results.

Similarly, we have a moral obligation to help others, Kant’s fourth example. Suppose we are prosperous and care little for others. We violate a duty by not helping others, and we cannot universalize the maxim. For we may need the benefit of others in the future. Again, Kant did not say this world was impossible, but he did not think any rational person desired such a world.

If we consider the same two actions—developing our talents and helping others—in terms of the second formulation of the categorical imperative, we discover similar difficulties. When universalization of a maxim has disastrous results or when we fail to treat ourselves and others as ends, we violate imperfect duties. Therefore, developing our talents and helping others are imperfect duties. They are absolute duties, but the specific means by which we satisfy these duties are open.

We may say that the categorical imperative is the formal representation of the moral law to the human mind. It commands human conduct independent of context. Compare the categorical imperative, as an abstract formulation of the moral law, to the distributive law in mathematics. This law states: a(b+c) = ab + ac. As stated, the principle is merely formal and without content. We give it content by putting numbers into the equation. The categorical imperative functions similarly in the moral domain. There, we place the maxim that operates in the moral context (situation) into the formulation to determine what to do. When we want to steal a library book or trash the sidewalk we ask, “what if everybody did this?” Recognizing the negative implications of our maxim, we see how it violates the categorical imperative. Theoretically, we may place any principle into the formulation to determine its morality. Those who do not test their maxim in this manner, turn away from the moral law.

8. Contemporary Applications

Let us consider a contemporary application of deontology to medical ethics. The emphasis on truth-telling precludes lying by health-care professionals to their patients or research subjects. Imperfect duties such as beneficence are straightforward, but how we help others is vague. The permissibility of euthanasia is also problematic. On the one hand, we may be able to universalize some forms of euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide, but, on the other hand, suicide is unequivocally forbidden. Thus, the permissibility of euthanasia depends in large part on how suicide is interpreted. The respect for persons notion is equally vague since it is not clear what it entails. Again, we are prohibited from treating ourselves or others as means, yet we should respect our’s and others’ autonomy.

9. Problems with Universalization

Despite its initial plausibility, universalization is problematic. For one thing, it is easy to universalize immoral maxims. Suppose we act according to the maxim, “Catholics should be exterminated.” There is no problem universalizing this maxim, in fact, we hope it does become universal if we really hate Catholics. The maxim “always kill Catholics,” just like the maxim “never kill Catholics,” can be universalized without contradiction by consistent Catholic-haters. Therefore, the test for universalization cannot discriminate between the two actions. We can also universalize a non-moral action like, “whenever we are alone, we sing.” We may universalize this without contradiction, but that does not mean it is moral.

It is also easy enough to think of non-moral and supposedly moral maxims which cannot

be universalized. We cannot universalize maxims like, “whenever hungry, go to Sue’s diner,” or “whenever we want to go to school, go to our school.” It is not possible for

everyone to go Sue’s diner or our school. More significantly, many moral actions cannot be universalize. We cannot universalize the maxim, “sell all you have and follow the Lord.” If everyone is selling, no one is buying!  We cannot even universalize a simple maxim like, “put other people first,” since everyone cannot be last! (The so-called altruist’s dilemma.)   So the test for universalization does not seem to adequately distinguish moral from immoral actions.

This brings to light a related difficulty. What maxim must we test for universalization? Maxims vary according to their generality or specificity. Kant tested very general maxims for universalization. “We cannot lie to achieve an end.” Suppose we made the maxim more specific. “We cannot lie except to save innocent people from murder.” This maxim is universalizable and spares us from telling the truth to inquiring murderers who ask the whereabouts of their intended victims. We could make the maxim even more specific. “We cannot lie except to save innocent people from murder and to spare people’s feelings.”

The problem is that as maxims become more specific, more questionable maxims become capable of consistent universalization. Eventually, we would be testing very specific maxims. Suppose a bald, bearded, philosopher professor, Horatio Rumpelstiltskin, was about to steal a book from the college library on Thursday at noon. He would discover, upon careful examination, that he could universalize a world where all so named and described individuals stole books at precisely that time. If maxims become too specific, universalization has no meaning. Thus, maxims must have some generality to be properly tested.

Now suppose I test the following maxim. “We cannot lie except to achieve our ends.” This maxim is sufficiently general to be universalized, but not sufficiently specific to rule out immoral actions. And the problem is not ameliorated by turning to the second formulation of the imperative. Does respect for persons tell us anything about whether we should universalize general or specific maxims? Should I always respect persons or always respect them except in certain situations? It appears that universalization is not as simple as it initially appeared.

10. General Difficulties

Kant claimed that duties are absolute. If duties are absolute, then what about conflicts between duties? Kant states that perfect duties supersede imperfect ones, and thus the duty not to lie precedes the duty to help others. If this is so, it follows that we must tell the truth to inquiring murderers. But this presented great difficulties for Kant. Surely duties have exceptions and perfect duties are not sacrosanct. Kant might have avoided this difficulty, as we have seen, by advocating that we universalize maxims with exceptions. A maxim like, “never lie except to inquiring murderers,” is not problematic.

Along these lines, the twentieth-century philosopher W.D. Ross argued that no duties were absolute. Ross, who taught at Oxford for nearly fifty years and was one of the world’s great Aristotelian and Kantian scholars, tried to modify Kant’s theory to account for conflict of duty cases. according to Ross, we have prima facie—at first glance—duties, but they are conditional. Our actual duties—at second glance, you might say—depend upon the situation. In conflict of duty cases, we carefully weigh our duties and then proceed to do the best we can. The problem is whether Ross’ conception of duties is too subjective and situational since individuals decide which duties apply in given situations. The main problem with Ross’ version of deontology is its emphasis on subjects and situations, an emphasis Kant wanted to avoid.

Another problem with Kant’s system is that it is so formal and abstract it hardly motivates us. Even if Kant could prove that ethics were completely rational, wouldn’t this take something away from the importance of moral choice? Isn’t ethics too messy and imprecise for the formality, precision, and logic of Kant’s system? Aristotle said that ethics could never be so precise. Maybe Kant demanded too much precision from his ethics?

Another general difficulty is Kant’s rejection of the importance of consequences. According to Kant, if we do our duty we are absolved of all responsibility for the consequences of our action. He defends this view in part because he believes we can never know the consequences with certainty. This is true to an extent, but this view rests upon very pessimistic assumptions about our knowledge of the consequences of our actions. If for no apparent reason we tell our friend she looks positively awful and disgusting, we can be pretty sure she will feel bad about this. We are hardly absolved by our claim that we were not sure she would feel bad. Sometimes we can be reasonably sure of the consequences, in which case duty may not be important. Much trouble has been caused by people who were simply “doing their duty.”

11. Kant’s Fundamental Idea

Despite the nuances connected with the idea of universalization, there is a core idea at the heart of Kant’s theory which is his lasting legacy. We have all been reprimanded by someone saying “how would you like someone to do that to you?” This is Kant’s fundamental idea. If there is a reason why you don’t want people to do something to you, then that same reason applies to what you want to do to others. It gives you a reason not to treat others in a way that you do not want to be treated. And, if you ignore that reason, you are acting irrationally. This is the kind of rational constraint Kant believed imposed itself upon our conduct. Of course, we have all experienced people who believe that the rules that apply to us do not apply to them, and, if they are bigger or more powerful than we are there is not much we can do. They might say to us, “You help me move on Saturday, but I won’t help you move next week.” We feel that they are doing something unfair and inconsistent, whether or not they recognize it. That is Kant’s fundamental idea. A reason for one is a reason for all.

A purely rational morality is a fascinating idea. Whether moral judgments might be truths of reason depends upon our understanding of concepts like rationality, interests, and individuality. In a strong conception of rationality, others’ interests give us a reason to act. In a weak conception, others’ interests do not give us a reason. If we think other people should respect our interests, so the argument goes, then we should respect theirs. But when we say others should respect our interests does that mean: 1) we want them to respect our interests; or 2) they have a reason to respect our interests. Kant and his contemporary followers argue for “2,” while other philosophers argue for “1.” Clearly, we want others to act in our interest, but it is not clear our interests give others a reason to act.

A conception of individualism is also relevant. If we have a strong conception of individuality—one in which individuals are radically separate—it is hard to see how the other’s desires/interests/wants give us a reason to do anything. On the other hand, if we have a weak conception of individuality —one in which all individuals are intimately connected—it is easy to see how the other’s interests give us reason to act. Maybe the rise of individualism lessens our sense of obligation toward others, or maybe communalism lessens our sense of obligation toward ourselves. Whatever our conclusions, the conceptions of rationality, interests, and individuality play a significant role in determining whether Kant’s primary idea is convincing for us.

Again Kant’s basic idea is reason grounds morality. Essentially, if there really is a reason why we should not commit immoral acts, then that reason applies to all of us. If there really is a reason to treat people with dignity and respect, or not to lie to or cheat them, then this reason applies to all of us whether we want it to or not. To say there are universal moral reasons ultimately confirms our belief in the intelligibility of reality. And, if the moral universe is unintelligible, nothing matters.

12. Conclusion

Despite all the positive contributions of Kant’s moral thought, one final difficulty plagues the theory. Kant argued that the good life is a life of duty and that other lives are not worthwhile. But there have been many decent and happy lives that were not motivated by duty. Consider also persons who live from a sense of duty, but who are miserable and unhappy. They live without love, compassion, pleasure, beauty, or intellectual stimulation. Are such individuals moral exemplars? True, many live decadent lives in exclusive pursuit of pleasure or happiness while dismissing moral virtue. But Kant’s ethics suffer from its emphasis on duty and virtue while neglecting happiness and pleasure. And if a philosophy stresses duty over happiness, then why should we do our duty? Duty may be part of morality, but so is happiness. In response, others would create a moral theory which emphasizes the good over the right, happiness over duty. That theory is utilitarianism.

(You can find an even briefer summary of Kant’s ethics here.)

Review of Aaron James’ “Assholes: A Theory of Donald Trump”

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© Darrell Arnold Ph.D.– (Reprinted with Permission)

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If you are interested in knowing about assholes, Aaron James is your man. In the rather new and thin study of asshology, James has emerged as the leading voice. His Assholes: A Theory [image error]was a New York Times bestseller in 2012. Assholes: A Theory of Donald Trump[image error] is his more recent sequel …

The book does not aim to convince people that Trump is an asshole. James is rightfully confident that we can accept that as a starting point. His goal in this book is merely to describe what kind of an asshole Trump is and to consider whether an asshole like Trump should be disqualified from the office of the presidency. The book does a fair job of fulfilling those two goals. However, the main fault of the book is that it only tacitly — not clearly and consciously—recognizes that asshology alone does not provide adequate tools for analyzing the unfittness of Trump to be the president. More on that later.

In addition, however, even if one just wants to consider how far the tools of asshology can get us in political analysis of Trump or Trumpism, it fails to clearly enough consider a whole host of important questions related to the election and support of such an asshole. For example, what were the cultural and structural conditions that lead not only to Trump emerging as an asshole but also to the citizens of the United States deciding that it was OK to vote this asshole into office? What might we do not only about the asshole President but also about the assholes who support him? In fact, while James mentions that some cultures might be more likely to produce assholes than others, he largely leaves aside the analysis of what in the United States has led to the support for an asshole of major proportions—a kind of Ueber-asshole or super-asshole like Trump.

James begins with a characterization of the asshole: “The asshole is the guy (they are mainly men) who systematically allows himself advantages in social relationships out of an entrenched (and mistaken) sense of entitlement that immunizes him against the complaints of other people” (p. 4). The asshole differs from a jerk because he has a greater sense of entitlement. His rudeness is more deeply entrenched. He is more insidious than an ass-clown, who acts more from a sense of pleasing or gaining the approval of the crowd.

Though assholes can also be ass-clowns, not all ass clowns are assholes. The ass-clown per ass-clown lacks the greater seriousness of the asshole. That is not to say that some ass-clowns cannot also be assholes. Donald Trump is in James’ view, a case in point. His ass clownness allows him to appeal to many, to benefit from the media spectacle. But he is clearly more than an ass-clown, even if his assholeness is combined with ass clownery more than we find with many well-known straightforward assholes like Ted Cruz, Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich, perhaps the father of assholes in contemporary U.S. politics. We, of course, know such assholes when we see them—and miss in them the entertainment quality we find in an asshole like Trump who is also an ass clown. James differentiates such assholes—and ass clowns—from psychopathic autocrats like Stalin or Hitler.

Though James notes Trump is an ass-clown and asshole, he eventually suggests that the problem with Trump is that he is not merely an asshole. The greater concern with him is that he has autocratic tendencies. James is surely right about that. The problem is that he does not acknowledge it squarely enough. His analysis at one point simply moves beyond his said topic. It’s at this point that he should have clearly acknowledged the relative impotency of any analysis of Trump from the perspective of asshology. Trump is an asshole—sure. But to know why he is unsuitable to be president, we have to move on to another kind of analysis.

It is not the fact that Donald Trump is an asshole or even any particular kind of asshole that makes him unsuitable for Presidency. It’s that he is so much more than an asshole, even if he is not (yet) the kind of autocrat of a Stalin or Hitler. In fact, assholes, even people who are assholes in a way somewhat similar to Trump, can be pretty good presidents. Bill Clinton was an asshole, who cheated on his wife regularly, lied to her and the nation on numerous matters, but was a pretty good president. He still had some sense of what the job required, had self-control in important ways, and had a commitment to some ideals beyond himself.

Trump isn’t unsuitable for being the president because he’s an asshole. He’s unsuitable to be the president, as James’ analysis itself goes on to suggest, because he undermines democratic principles and constitutional norms, because he cares too little about the well-being of many Americans and focuses on what is advantageous for a very small number of Americans, because he is neither curious about the world around him, nor informed about it. A study of asshology does not provide the resources for handling any of these issues well enough.

In the book, James argues that Trump is not only a particular kind of asshole but that he is a particular kind of bullshitter. But I believe his analysis of Trump as a bullshitter also misses the mark. Trump is not a liar or a conman, he argues, because a liar and conman knows that he is lying (p. 38). A bullshitter, by contrast, just doesn’t care about the truth (p. 31). Yet, what is missing from this is that a bullshitter also is often just shooting the shit. He isn’t really doing what he’s doing to gain a lot of concrete results in the world or in politics. As Harry Frankfurt says when describing one such bullshitting orator, he “intends these statements to convey a certain impression of himself” (qtd. p. 32). It’s not that Trump does not do this, and does not disregard the truth. It’s just that he does so much more. Through what he is doing, he isn’t just shooting the shit and getting people to view him a certain way. He is ultimately aiming at lowering taxes, eliminating environmental policy, appointing certain supreme court justices. Bullshitters are not folks who pick your pocket after gaining your trust. Conmen are. Just as asshology fails to supply the right tools for an analysis of Trump, so does bullshitology. It’s not that Trump isn’t a bullshitter. It’s just that he’s so much more than a bullshitter that labeling him a bullshitter obfuscates more than it clarifies.

James does go on to evaluate Trump’s inadequacy for the presidency by highlighting some of these issues that move beyond asshology or bullshitology. But he does so without a clarity of purpose. He does so without clearly enough noticing that he is doing it.

In those sections of the book, he notes Trump’s authoritarian tendencies (pp. 48 ff.). He notes “Being an asshole, per se, might not even be [Trump’s] worst flaw. Trump’s worst flaw could lie in his sexism, his racism, his naked self–servingness, or his destructive potential” (p. 53).

In fact, an analysis of what makes Trump unsuitable for the presidency — insofar as it focuses on character issues at all — needs to be rooted in psychoanalysis more than the reflections of asshology offer. We do better to turn to studies of Eric Fromm and Theodor Adorno on the authoritarian personality and to reflections by Hannah Arendt on how propaganda works in authoritarian cultures.

More importantly, we need to look too broader social movements. Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway’s Merchants of Doubt about how lies are increasingly consciously manufactured with the funding of big business and distributed in our media ecosystems provides an important starting point. More recent analysis of dark money in politics productively builds on this. Furthermore, recent studies by Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century[image error]) and Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblat (How Democracies Die[image error]) that try to draw lessons from the erosion of constitutional norms in various countries of Eastern Europe and South America are very useful.

For all that the theory of assholes cannot do in helping us to analyze Trump, perhaps it does have some little part to play that can be helpful. Besides that, Trump isn’t the only asshole out there. We are surrounded by assholes. James notes strategies for self-preservation in our everyday environments with assholes.

I number here the coping strategies he notes, otherwise using his language verbatim:

avoid the asshole if you can;
accept that he probably won’t listen or change;
affirm your worth by calling a wrong a wrong;
hope for his best;
laugh as much as possible;
go easy on yourself;
cooperate on your own terms;
make small improvements, in order to increase your sense of efficacy;
politely request to be treated as you prefer (because he might do it);
mildly retaliate;
take a public stand to uphold your or other people’s rights (e.g., refuse to shake his hand);
and by all means, be understanding of different coping styles to better cooperate in holding the guy accountable.

Besides that, James notes strategies for decreasing the suitableness of our political and cultural environment for the proliferation of further assholes. For that, he suggests supporting “moral and civic education,” encouraging students to pursue life’s of service rather than just profit maximization, a general countering of the “greed is good,” capitalist system. The final two chapters of the book use general tools of political theory to argue that we need a renewed commitment to social life based on mutual respect—the kind of respect that assholes deny others. He affirms the need for the type of Republicanism for which Philip Pettit argues, one in which the development of a common reason is facilitated and the constitutional and respectful norms of communication and recognition are affirmed.

I wholeheartedly support James’ focus on these issues here. In doing these things, he seems to me, however, to be moving far beyond the analysis of asshology. He thus perhaps here does more than he intends or claims to do.

The analysis of Trump and Trumpisism with the tools of asshology is perhaps cathartic. It sheds some light. But the tools are just not strong enough. Trump is an asshole of course. But he’s so much more than that, that to criticize him from that perspective alone is an insult to assholes everywhere.

What is Fallibilism?

FALLIBILISM

In a previous post, I claimed to be a fallibilist. This technical philosophical term refers (roughly) to “the belief that any idea we have could be wrong.” Or, more precisely,

Fallibilism (from medieval Latin fallibilis, “liable to err”) is the philosophical principle that human beings could be wrong about their beliefs, expectations, or their understanding of the world, and yet still be justified in holding their incorrect beliefs. In the most commonly used sense of the term, this consists in being open to new evidence that would disprove some previously held position or belief, and in the recognition that “any claim justified today may need to be revised or withdrawn in light of new evidence, new arguments, and new experiences.”[1] This position is taken for granted in the natural sciences.[2]

FALLIBILISM AND SKEPTICISM

Perhaps the most important issue is to distinguish fallibilism from skepticism—the doctrine that no idea, belief, or claim is ever well justified or is definitely known. Generally, skepticism is thought to be a stronger claim than fallibilism. Skepticism implies that we should assert nothing, suspend all judgment, or doubt the reliability of the senses, whereas fallibilists generally accept the existence of knowledge or justified belief. 

But how can we reconcile these two views? May we say, with consistency, that our ideas might be mistaken, yet we are still justified in believing them? If John claims to know x but admit that x  might nor be true, then how is what he claims to know knowledge? To say you know something, but at the same time admit you might be in error seems mistaken.

[The reader is welcome to consider sophisticated replies to this problem such as David Lewis on “epistemic contextualism” or P. Rysiew on “concessive knowledge attributions“—i.e., sentences of the form ‘S knows that p, but it is possible that q’ (where q entails not-p).]

FALLIBILISM AS CRITICAL THINKING

But let’s approach this issue more simply. If you buy a lottery ticket and the odds of winning are 1 in 10 million, do you know you won’t win? No, you don’t know this with 100% certainty but you do know you won’t win with a very high degree of probability. Now if you play the lottery and buy two tickets you have a slightly greater chance of winning, but again you still can be very confident you won’t win. And the same thing if you buy a thousand tickets. Even if you buy a thousand tickets you can justifiably say, “I know I won’t win,” if by know you mean very, very certain.

Now if I say that I know that evolutionary, quantum, atomic, relativity or gravitational theories are true, this is short-hand for “they are true beyond any reasonable doubt; meaning they are true unless gods, intelligent aliens or a computer simulations are deceiving my cognitive and sensory apparatuses, i.e., they are true unless something really weird is going on. Now something weird could be going on and aliens may be having fun at our expense, say by making evolution look true when it isn’t. There may be gods or aliens or computer programs or something else deceiving us. But no one should believe this.

This is the essence of good thinking; proportioning our assent to the evidence. There is overwhelming evidence for the basic ideas of modern science, but no evidence that people who play the lottery generally win. In fact, the evidence shows that almost everyone who plays the lottery loses. A well-developed mind learns to distinguish the almost certainly true from the probably true from the equally likely to be true from the probably not true to the almost certainly false. To better understand, consider some simple examples.

EXAMPLES

Suppose I say, as one born in the US and a current resident of Seattle WA, one of the following:

1. I have been to Jupiter.

2. I have been to the South Pole.

3. I have been to Russia.

4. I have been to Europe.

5. I have been to Portland.

6. I have been to Seattle.

It is easy to see that as we proceed down the list the probability that I have been to one these places increases. In the beginning, the chance was practically zero—although as a fallibilist you should concede that I may be an alien who has been to Jupiter. At the bottom of the list, the chance is 100% that I’ve been there unless I’m lying to you or am being deceived by gods, aliens, simulations, etc.  as to my whereabouts. If I tell you #1, then you know (beyond a reasonable doubt) that the claim is false. If I tell you #6, while standing next to you at the Space Needle, then you know (beyond a reasonable doubt) that the claim is true. Finally, if I tell you #2 thru #5 then you don’t know and have to examine the evidence to determine the probability my claim is true.

And this is how one can be a fallibilist and claim to know things simultaneously. Any idea I have could be wrong, but I feel amazingly confident that #1 is false and #6 is true in the above examples. If I am justified in being amazingly confident by the evidence, that counts as knowledge.

Here is another example. Suppose I say:

1. If they play a football game, the Seattle Seahawks will beat a Pop Warner team.

2. If they play a football game, the Seattle Seahawks will beat a high school team.

3. If they play a football game, the Seattle Seahawks will beat a college team.

4. If they play a football game, the Seattle Seahawks will beat an NFL team.

5. If they play a football game, the Seattle Seahawks will beat a team of omnipotent, omniscient, football players.

You should say to me, I know #1 is true beyond a reasonable doubt (although the Seahawks could lose on purpose, all simultaneously have heart attacks during the game, or die on the way to the game in an accident and forfeit, etc.) and that #5 is false beyond a reasonable doubt because the Seahawks can’t beat godlike football players.

So I am a fallibilist. Any idea I have could be wrong but some ideas are more likely to be true than others. All one can do, as a rational person, is proportion their assent to the evidence. You might win the lottery, I might have been on Jupiter, and the Pop Warner team might beat the Seahawks … but don’t bet on it.

__________________________________________________________________________

Nikolas Kompridis, “Two kinds of fallibilism”, Critique and Disclosure (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), 180.
Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996

Survival of the Richest

Robots revolt in R.U.R., a 1920 play

Professor and media theorist Douglas Rushkoff recently penned an article that went viral,

“Survival of the Richest.” It outlines how the super wealthy are preparing for doomsday. Here is a recap followed by a brief commentary.

Rushkoff was recently invited to deliver a speech for an unusually large fee, about half his academic salary, on “the future of technology.” He expected a large audience but, upon arrival, he was ushered into a small room with a table surrounded by five wealthy men. But they weren’t interested in the future of technological innovation. Instead, they wanted to know things like where they should move to avoid the coming climate crisis, whether mind uploading will work and, most prominently, how to “maintain authority over [their] security force after the event?”

The Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr. Robot hack that takes everything down.

This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from the angry mobs. But how would they pay the guards once money was worthless? What would stop the guards from choosing their own leader? The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers — if that technology could be developed in time.

That’s when it hit me: At least as far as these gentlemen were concerned, this was a talk about the future of technology. Taking their cue from Elon Musk colonizing Mars, Peter Thiel reversing the aging process, or Sam Altman and Ray Kurzweil uploading their minds into supercomputers, they were preparing for a digital future that had a whole lot less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether and insulating themselves from a very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is really about just one thing: escape.

Rushkoff continues by expressing his disdain for transhumanism,

The more committed we are to this [transhuman] view of the world, the more we come to see human beings as the problem and technology as the solution. The very essence of what it means to be human is treated less as a feature than bug. No matter their embedded biases, technologies are declared neutral. Any bad behaviors they induce in us are just a reflection of our own corrupted core. It’s as if some innate human savagery is to blame for our troubles.

Ultimately, according to the technosolutionist orthodoxy, the human future climaxes by uploading our consciousness to a computer or, perhaps better, accepting that technology itself is our evolutionary successor. Like members of a gnostic cult, we long to enter the next transcendent phase of our development, shedding our bodies and leaving them behind, along with our sins and troubles.

The mental gymnastics required for such a profound role reversal between humans and machines all depend on the underlying assumption that humans suck. Let’s either change them or get away from them, forever.

It is such thinking that leads the tech billionaires to want to escape to Mars, or at least New Zealand. But “the result will be less a continuation of the human diaspora than a lifeboat for the elite.”

For his part, Rushkoff suggested to his small audience that the best way to survive and flourish after “the event,” would be to treat other people well now. Better act to avoid social instability, environmental collapse and all the rest than to figure out how to deal with them in the future. Their response?

They were amused by my optimism, but they didn’t really buy it. They were not interested in how to avoid a calamity; they’re convinced we are too far gone. For all their wealth and power, they don’t believe they can affect the future. They are simply accepting the darkest of all scenarios and then bringing whatever money and technology they can employ to insulate themselves — especially if they can’t get a seat on the rocket to Mars.

But for Rushkoff:

We don’t have to use technology in such antisocial, atomizing ways. We can become the individual consumers and profiles that our devices and platforms want us to be, or we can remember that the truly evolved human doesn’t go it alone.

Being human is not about individual survival or escape. It’s a team sport. Whatever future humans have, it will be together.

Reflections – I don’t doubt that many wealthy and powerful people would willingly leave the rest of us behind, or enslave or kill us all—a theme endorsed by Ted Kaczynski in The Unabomber Manifesto: Industrial Society and Its Future[image error]. But notice that these tendencies toward evil have existed independent of technology or any transhumanist philosophy—history is replete with examples of cruelty and genocide.

So the question is whether we can create a better world without radically transforming human beings. I doubt it. As I’ve said many times our apelike brains—characterized by territoriality, aggression, dominance hierarchies, irrationality, superstition, and cognitive biases—in combination with 21st-century technology is a lethal combination. And that’s why, in order to survive the many existential risks now confronting us and to have descendants who flourish, we should (probably) embrace transhumanism.

So while there are obvious risks associated with the power that science and technology afford, they are our best hope as we approach many of these “events.” So if we don’t want our planet to circle our sun lifeless for the next few billion years, if we believe that conscious life is really worthwhile, then we must work quickly to transform both our moral and intellectual natures. Otherwise at most only a few will survive.

Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church

© Darrell Arnold Ph.D.– (Repri[image error]nedictine monastery for two years in the mid-1980s. There, of the eight clergy who were faculty members there, five had believable allegations of sexual misconduct brought against them. Two were brought to court for pedophilia charges against children under 12. Three had allegations brought against them for misconduct with young seminarians. That’s 62.5%. You’d be hard-pressed to find another organization with similar levels of such problems. Changes have occurred since I was there. But as the Pennsylvania report indicates, the Catholic church is still enormously sick. Unfortunately, it seems to have little capacity for understanding its own sickness, let alone for making the changes needed to appropriately address it.

We can, unfortunately, expect little movement on the issues I’ve mentioned. So the time has come for more external controls. More investigations are needed. Statutes of limitations need to be extended. Some of those involved need to go to prison. Maybe external controls will help move the recalcitrant institution to make needed changes. Let’s hope so — for the good of the children.

A note about the author:

My particular interest in this issue is related to my background having grown up Catholic and having studied philosophy and theology and taught philosophy in Catholic institutions. I attended Catholic grade school and spent some time in a Catholic high school. Besides having studied at the mentioned Benedictine monastery as a Catholic seminarian, I completed my bachelor’s degree at an archdiocesan university and finished my master’s degree in philosophy at a Jesuit university, where I was also briefly enrolled in their master’s program in theology, before going to Germany where I did my doctorate in non-Catholic university. From 2010 until August of 2018 I was a philosophy professor at an archdiocesan university in Florida (where I also served one year as an Interim Dean). I am now in the midst of a transfer to a Florida state college.

Review of Richard J. Bernstein’s, Why Read Hannah Arendt Now

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© Darrell Arnold Ph.D.– (Reprinted with Permission) http://darrellarnold.com/2018/07/08/w...

Freedom—as Hannah Arendt understands it—is only possible in a participatory political life. Such a form of life, which cultivates individuality and spontaneity, can be contrasted with totalitarianism, which ultimately aims at the total domination of the individual. Our responsibility is to ensure our own freedom—that is, to ensure collective, participatory forms of political life under which such freedom is possible.

Richard J. Bernstein explores these and other of Arendt’s ideas with clarity and brevity in Why Read Hannah Arendt Now?[image error] His focus is on central themes in her work that are relevant to issues we are facing today (8). Though he mentions international issues of importance, with the exception of the question of Israel, his contemporary focus is on life in America under the Trump administration. The topics he covers in Arendt include her views on refugees, states and statelessness, Israeli politics, race, the banality of evil, truth and lying in politics, the American revolution, and personal and political responsibility.

Arendt’s view of politics is normative. When she describes politics, as well as key concepts like “power” and “freedom” she does not merely describe the way politics is understood to work in the real world or offer views of “power” or “freedom” that are generally accepted. She makes distinctions necessary to understand a political realm that we might strive for, freedom that we might hope to achieve and power the way it would be justly wielded. Her discussions of these issues — the premise of Bernstein’s book — are worth serious consideration in our present context, as they provide intellectual tools for countering tendencies toward authoritarianism that we can see emerging in various places throughout the world.

While humans have free-will, [according to Arendt] Arendt does not identify this with freedom. Human freedom, which she characterizes as “public freedom,” is a social and political achievement. It requires the development of human freedom of thought and individuality. An expression of human free will is the ability to form one’s own judgments and develop one’s own opinions and perspectives.

It is the making up one’s own minds in the public sphere that characterizes public freedom that she thinks we are to strive for. Arendt’s focus in her discussion of the public sphere is on how perspectives are formed under conditions of dialogue and exchange. While this was part of life in the ancient Athenian polis, it was also an emphasis and achievement of the eighteenth-century philosophes, who exchanged views in salons. It is in the give and take with others that individuals achieve better judgment. Judgment, she emphasizes in a text that sounds more than a bit like Habermas’ later thought, “rests on potential agreement with others…and the thinking process…finds itself always and primarily, even when I am quite alone in making up my mind, in an anticipated communication with others with whom I know I must finally come to agreement.” (101-02).

Arendt’s writing on the American revolution drives home her view of the importance of the public sphere. The American, as opposed to the French, Revolution delivered not just on “liberty” (as Arendt defines this, the ending of their own domination by a political authority). The American Revolution also delivered on “freedom”—and for Arendt this entails “constitution-making.” The context of the American revolution, where the colonies had already been much involved in the daily tasks of self-government created conditions for a successful revolution: “the fight for independence … was the condition for freedom, and the constitution of the new states” (qtd. 106).

But the independence was not enough to guarantee freedom. In the constitution, the Founding Fathers, set up conditions for continued self-government that makes freedom possible. Among the important conditions for this were, of course, the balance of powers, states rights, and limited government. But also key was the creation of public spaces for public discussion, for opinion formation (107). Jefferson, she highlights, had even set up local wards or “elementary republics” for self-government. His fear was that without them, in Bernstein’s words, “public freedom would wither away” (109).

In various of Arendt’s work, she emphasizes the importance of such local wards — in contexts as varying as the American Revolution and modern political uprisings. In writing on the Budapest uprising of 1956, she noted their emergence, even in a short period: “The neighborhood councils emerged from sheer living together and grew into country and other territorial councils, evolutionary councils grew out of fighting together; councils of writers and artists, one is tempted to thinker, were born in cafes, students’ and youths’ councils at the university, military councils in the army, councils of civil servants in ministries, workers’ councils in factories, and so on. The formation of a council in each disparate group turned a merely haphazard togetherness into a political institution” (qtd. 113-4).

In Arendt’s view such community building impulses, while again and again being forgotten, can re-emerge. They provide one of the best hopes against the totalitarian temptations, which also remain present in modern societies. In Bernstein’s words: “Arendt expresses what was always fundamental to her and should be fundamental for us—the desire of people to have their voices heard in public, to become genuine participants in shaping their political life” (115).

One of Arendt’s most famous works, The Origins of Totalitarianism[image error], offers a penetrating analysis of the emergence of political forms that run antithetical to the participatory forms that Arendt thinks provide our opportunity for realizing human freedom. Totalitarian regimes move to destroy freedom and institute “total domination.”  “The logic of total domination” characteristic of such totalitarian regimes involves three steps.

First, totalitarians eliminate judicial protections of the person, stripping people of their legal rights. Second, they move to impinge even on moral acts of conscience. This can happen, for example, when individuals are forced to choose between various morally objectionable choices. As Arendt noted “When a man is faced with the alternative of betraying and thus murdering his friends or sending his wife and children…to their death…The alternative is no longer between good and evil, but between murder and murder” (qtd. 30). Third, they move toward the destruction of individuality. In Arendt’s words “For to destroy individuality is to destroy spontaneity, man’s power to begin something new out of his own resources, something that cannot be explained on the basis of reactions to environment and events” (31). Arendt views the final aim of such totalitarian regimes as the transformation of human being into “living corpses” (31). Individual no longer express their own lives and make decisions for themselves. They are totally dominated.

In Arendt’s discussion of totalitarianism and in other work, she also makes important points about refugees and the denial even of “the right to have rights.”  Arendt is perhaps most famous for her comments on the banality of evil in her evaluation of the Eichmann case. Her main point, whatever one’s assessment of how appropriate her analysis was for Eichmann himself, is that the great evils of the Third Reich, monstrous as they were, did not generally occur because the people carrying out these deeds were monstrous. Though we may want to think of evil in mythological terms, Arendt suggests that we rethink this. As she noted in a later assessment of the Eichmann trial: “However monstrous the deeds were, the doer was neither monstrous nor demonic, and the only specific characteristic one could detect in his past as well as in his behavior during the trial and the preceding police examination was something entirely negative: it was not stupidity but a curious, quite authentic inability to think” (qtd. 63). The evil of totalitarianism in the Third Reich occurred as people moved on with their normal everyday lives, following orders and climbing career ladders with a lack of much concern for those around them.

Some of Arendt’s deepest insights concern truth, lying, manipulation and self-deception in totalitarian regimes. Though there may be new elements to our “post-truth” culture, totalitarian regimes had long ago mastered propaganda that played on a willingness of people to suspend disbelief. In Between Past and Future [image error]Arendt had noted: “The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lies will now be accepted as truth, and truth defamed as lies, but that the sense by which we take our bearing in the real world—and the category of truth vs. falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed” (qtd. 75).

In other work she notes similarly important points about the erosion of truth in totalitarian societies: “What convinces masses are not facts, not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system of which they are presumably a part” (qtd. 77). In Bernstein’s prescient discussion of her views: “People who feel that they have been neglected and forgotten yearn for a narrative that will make sense of the anxiety and the misery they are experiencing — one that promises redemption from their troubles. In such a situation, an authoritarian leader can exploit the anxieties that people are experiencing and successfully blur the distinction between lies and reality. Argument and appeal to facts are not really important for such propaganda. An appealing fictional story can be foolproof against factual truth, reality, or argument” (77)

The use of appealing fiction for purposes of manipulation occurs in what Arendt calls “image making.” In image making, facts are dismissed that do not line up with the cultivated image of a political movement. As Bernstein notes, “the image becomes a substitute for reality” (77). Clearly, those with despotic tendencies can play on that, encouraging individuals to dismiss as “fake news” or as a conspiracy from elites anything that conflicts with a cultivated political image. Arendt’s words on this are still pertinent. “Contemporary history,” she notes, “is full of instance in which tellers of factual truth were felt to be more dangerous, and even more hostile than the real opponents” (qtd. 79). On the same topic, she notes “Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing than reason, than reality, because the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear” (qtd. 80).

Such incredibly insightful observations on truth and lies in politics are just some of the many ideas of relevance to us today that Bernstein highlights. Bernstein succinctly presents Arendt’s views on these varying issues. And he makes appropriate bridges to present policies and dynamics in U.S. and international relations. If the book has a flaw it is that the various ideas are not presented systemically. Some might also regret what the book doesn’t do. It doesn’t speak of Arendt’s relationship with Heidegger, for example. But none of that is precisely the point of this publication. In the main, the book does very well what it sets out to do, which is to describe why we should read Hannah Arendt now.

We will benefit indeed from taking earnestly Arendt’s warning that “Totalitarian solutions may well survive the fall of totalitarian regimes in the form of strong temptations which will come up wherever it seems impossible to alleviate political, social and economic misery in a manner worth of man.” (qtd. 34).

Faced with a world in which such temptations are attractive to many, our best antidote may be to cultivate the forms of participatory democratic form that Arendt argues can allow the development of greater human freedom. Arendt — skeptical as she was of narratives of inevitable progress or inevitable decline — would emphasize that our freedom is key, as is our understanding of responsibility.

Review of Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt: “How Democracies Die”

[image error][image error]© Darrell Arnold Ph.D.– (Reprinted with Permission) http://darrellarnold.com/2018/07/12/h...

We all know of democratic institutions that have ended by revolution or coup. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, two professors of government at Harvard University, highlight another way that they increasingly end — through a slow erosion of institutions by those who were democratically elected to oversee them.

In How Democracies Die[image error] the authors apply their knowledge of the collapse of democratic institutions from Europe and Latin America to analyze the erosion of democratic norms in the United States. While the constitutional system and the norms in the United States under Trump are still preserving democracy, the erosion of norms is alarming. Trump has the tendencies of the European and Latin American demagogues that Levitsky and Ziblatt have spent their lives studying; and he is doing much that demagogues elsewhere have done to undermine democratic institutions. So far, the Republican Congress has also adopted a policy of appeasement very much like what we find where demagogues have assumed power. They have largely failed to play the needed gatekeeping role.

At the outset of the book Levitsky and Ziblatt outline how “fateful alliances” in many countries have allowed demagogues to assume power. In many cases, those who undermine democracies come into their leadership as political outsiders. To gain respectability, they are dependent on political insiders opening doors and pursuing their agendas. As the authors note: “A sort of devil’s bargain often mutates to the benefit of the insurgent” (15). Many times the political outsiders display authoritarian behavior, but the insiders think they can keep them under control, so support them for reasons of political expediency. Rather than blocking would-be dictators, the “fateful alliances” help usher the insurgents into power. “The abdication of political responsibility by existing leaders often marks a nation’s first step toward authoritarianism” (19).

In many cases, the demagogues come to power because of a lack of good mechanisms for gatekeeping. In the U.S. authoritarian figures have emerged again and again throughout history. Henry Ford is one such extremist. He railed against Jews, bankers, communists, and was impressive enough to Adolf Hitler to receive his praise in Mein Kampf (43ff.). Ford at one time had political aspirations. He nearly won a Senate seat in 1918 and was in discussions for a presidential run in 1924. However, the party establishment of the time was able to successfully block him. Huey Long and Father Charles Coughlin are two well-known autocratic figures from the 1930s. Joseph McCarthy is perhaps the most famous example from the 1950s. Like Trump, these leaders played to populism. Unlike Trump, they were successfully blocked from ascendancy to the presidency.

Levitsky and Ziblatt think there are two main reasons that account for Trump’s success: 1) the Citizen’s United decision, which made it much easier to have nearly unlimited funding of elections; and 2) the emergence of new media. The latter includes both Fox News and various right-wing radio and TV personalities, which David Frum has called the “conservative entertainment complex” (see 56) as well as social media. Trump was a great beneficiary of both. Despite the NeverTrump movement and warnings from a few Republican Party insiders, public opinion during the election was able to hold strong, in no small part because of the aid of commentators like Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter, as well as the increasingly important Breitbart news.

There are four main indicators of authoritarian behavior that the authors highlight: 1) the rejection of democratic institutions, or at least a weak commitment to them; 2) the denial of the legitimacy of political opponents; 3) the toleration or encouragement of violence; and 4) the desire or willingness to reduce civil liberties (see 23ff., 61ff.). Even before his election, Trump displayed all four in ways by now familiar. The Republicans abdicated their responsibility to democracy, failing to take a principled stance against him. Often for reasons of expediency, they supported him despite his unfitness for office and of the clear danger even to the constitutional order that many of them indicated he presented.

They did this for reasons that are common in such circumstances. 1) They thought they might control him. (There was much talk that he would be different once he assumed office). 2) There was “ideological collusion.” While even on the eve of the election, 78 Republicans came out supporting Clinton in a piece in the Washington Post, only one of them was an elected official (69). Those in office chose political expediency. Like others who have made fateful alliances, they thought they could control him, or that given that he would push along their agenda of tax cuts and court picks, the risk was worth it.

Once in power demagogues set about to subvert democracy. As Levitsky and Ziblatt note: “The erosion of democracy takes place piecemeal, often in baby steps.” Though there is no exact blueprint, certain steps are very common. One is the attempt to “capture the referees” (78). Independent checks and balances are a hindrance to power, so insurgents will typically try to win them to their side, or failing that attack them as they work to undermine their independence. “Contemporary autocrats tend to hide their repression behind a veneer of legality” (83).

So the demagogue works within the system to capture independent checks and to eliminate independent voices. Some things prove easier to do: One can fire civil servants and non-partisans and replace them with loyalists (79). If the courts or intelligence community is independent, then it is typical to undermine them. The long game is to gain them to one’s side though since this is a way to create a ruse of legitimacy. If one succeeds in capturing them, then they can be used as a weapon to investigate or prosecute one’s enemies and to protect oneself and one’s allies (78ff.).

Other independent voices in civil society also need to be quieted. If one has an independent press, then one can attempt to intimidate them into self-censorship. Trump’s threats to open up libel laws for bias in the press is one of his attempts to do this. Failing this, he, like various authoritarian leaders, undermines their legitimacy. His well-known accusations that they are “enemies of the people” and produce “fake news” are clear and repeated attempts to undermine the significance of their independence.

Another typical course of action is to undermine influential and independent business leaders, who might pose a threat. Trump’s threats to sue Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon and the Washington Post, for breaching antitrust law come to mind, as well as his threats to hinder the proposed merger of Time Warner and AT&T. Authoritarians also often do what they can to silence alternative cultural voices, such as actors, stars, athletes. From attacks on Susan Sarandon to NFL players, examples in the Trump administration are not wanting.

Another part of the long game is to ultimately change the rules of the game and even the constitution itself. Rule changes can occur in numerous areas. In voting procedures, we have seen the attempts that preceded Trump have increased, as various voter suppression tactics — from gerrymandering to voter ID laws and the purging of voter registration lists. All of these target those who tend to vote Democratic.

Very often autocrats benefit from exploiting crisis “to justify power grabs” (95). In some famous cases, such as Hitler’s Reichstag fire and Putin’s allegations of Chechen terrorist attacks, there is considerable question about whether the crises were even real or fabricated. Nonetheless, in both cases, power was able to be expanded as civil liberties were sacrificed for security purposes. Very often leaders are able to consolidate power after such crises as their popularity also soars. As rules of the game are often rewritten in such times of crisis, it’s not unusual that people hardly notice.

While Levitsky and Ziblatt think that the constitution is very important, they emphasize that it alone will not secure a democracy. Numerous countries with constitutions similar to our own have had failed democracies. Argentina and the Philippines are just two examples (100). In addition to the constitution, the authors emphasize the importance of “strong democratic norms.” These include toleration of differences among the political parties and “institutional forbearance” (see 102 ff.) The former means that one can respect one’s political opponents without viewing them as enemies. In democracies, this often means that one doesn’t make full use of some powers that may not be explicitly prohibited in the constitution, but that have emerged as unspoken rules for interaction that secure civility and the long-term functioning of the political system. As Levitsky and Ziblatt colloquially describe the thought behind this: “Think of democracy as a game that we want to keep playing indefinitely. To ensure future rounds of the game, players must refrain from either incapacitating the other team or antagonizing them to such a degree, that they refuse to play again tomorrow” (107).

The authors describe the breakdown in such norms in various regimes where democracy has failed and highlight the decline of such norms in the U.S. system as politicians have increasingly come to play what Mark Tushnet has called “constitutional hardball” (109). Many things not explicitly prohibited are then done even where long-standing custom dictates otherwise.

Some of the best parts of the book outline how the gatekeepers and the unwritten rules emerged and functioned in the history of American politics, and the threats to the democratic norms that the country experienced. In the history of the U.S., the gatekeeping that did emerge and the “democratic norms” were accompanied by exclusionary policy toward African-Americans and women, such that the U.S. for most of this history could not be characterized as fully democratic.

It was by no means an easy road to where we ended in the 1970s when women and African-Americans were more meaningfully included into U.S. politics. From there, though, the authors highlight the decline in the democratic norms that began in the 1980s. Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay were among the first to reintroduce “constitutional hardball,” undermining nearly all efforts for cooperation with the Democrats when they were in power. Americans for Tax Freedom and various heavy donors associated with them, as well as the emergent Tea Party, all have continued to contribute to the erosion of democratic norms and unwritten rules of governance. Democrats have reacted to that, with their own incursions, but the authors leave no doubt that in recent history this problem has largely been perpetuated by the Republican Party.

All of this leads us to Trump, who the authors’ view as a unique figure in the history of U.S. politics in the ways that he undermines democratic norms. The book usefully highlights instances that display his autocratic character and his attempts to undermine checks and balances of the U.S. political system and to capture the traditional guardians of our democracy.

Though our constitutional checks have so far proved able to guard against their ongoing attack, Trump’s undermining of the norms of democracy is worrying. One reason is that his rhetoric begins to normalize both attitudes and behavior that undermine our constitutional system.

Writing of his behavior, they note: “Never has a president flouted so many unwritten rules so quickly” (195). Where there is a long-standing norm against nepotism, he breaks with it, appointing his daughter and son-in-law in key advisory posts within his administration. Where there is a norm of divesting investments, he breaks with it in ways that the governmental ethics commission has been critical. Where a civility with former rivals and outgoing presidents has prevailed, Trump has ended it, having threatened to have Hillary Clinton investigated and having falsely accused Barack Obama of having spied on him during his campaign. He has not only attacked the press in ways that we are by now familiar with, but he has also at times excluded them from major press events. He has attacked the judiciary and the intelligence community, after reportedly having asked for James Comey’s commitment of personal loyalty. His pardon of Joe Arpaio directly undermined a decision of one of the branches of government put in place to check presidential power.

So Trump has flouted typical restraint. Trump has also lied at a level truly unprecedented. According to PolitiFact, in the 2016 election, 69% of his public statements were mostly false. The New York Times showed that he made demonstrably false statements at least once a day his first forty days in office (198). None of this shows any likelihood of abating.

Through all of this, Trump is undermining American soft power abroad. As the authors note: “America is no longer a democratic model. A country whose president attacks the press threatens to lock up his rival and declares that he might not accept elections results cannot credibly defend democracy” (206). The U.S. is in “a period of democratic recession” (205).

Levitsky and Ziblatt see two main forces that are responsible for this situation: One is America’s racial and religious realignment. The other is the growth in economic inequality. The new racial and religious demographic fuels polarization, and politicians have become increasingly beholden to outside money, not controlling their parties themselves. We now need a “multi-ethnic democracy” where the politicians are not as beholden to their funders.

How Democracies Die is an extremely informative book. But it is especially in the proposal of what to do in the final chapter on “saving democracy” that the book disappoints a bit. The main point of the authors is that democratic norms are essential to the functioning of democracy. The authors’ thus end with something of a moral plea to return to democratic norms and expand them for an inclusive society. As the note in the closing pages: “Ultimately…American democracy depends on us–the citizens of the United States. No single political leader can end a democracy; no single leader can rescue one, either. Democracy is a shared enterprise. Its fate depends on us all” (230).

That is true enough. But it also doesn’t get us very far.

Nonetheless, this book does a great service in at least clearly describing typical steps that lead to failed democracies. That will surely be useful for those trying to prevent the further erosion of ours.

Review of Douglas Kellner’s: American Nightmare. Donald Trump, Media Spectacle, and Authoritarian Populism

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© Darrell Arnold Ph.D.– (Reprinted with Permission)  http://darrellarnold.com/2018/07/09/a...

Donald Trump developed skills in marketing and show business, as a savvy self-marketer and a reality TV star, able to exploit new media — to plaster his name on the side of buildings, on boxes of steaks and on a fake university. He’s something of a 21st-century version of P.T. Barnum, able to garner popular attention, but with new media unavailable to the 19th-century showman/con-artist.

Douglas Kellner’s American Nightmare: Donald Trump, Media Spectacle, and Authoritarian Populism examines Trump’s political rise against the backdrop of contemporary media but also [against] the work of Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, and Theodor Adorno.

Kellner holds a Chair in the Philosophy of Education at UCLA. He is known for early work on the Frankfurt School, Marxism, and Postmodernism, but he has done more recent work on media culture. The first part of American Nightmare provides the media theoretic and philosophic framework for the book. The latter part focuses more on specific instances during the Trump campaign and early presidency in which Trump generated media spectacle. In his final chapter, before the “provisional conclusion,” Kellner indicates that the analysis of Trump in this thin volume (109pp.) is to be continued.

“Media spectacle” is one basic concept that Kellner uses to analyze Trump’s political rise. Such spectacles are “media constructs” that “disrupt the habitual flow of information” (3). The constructs seize people’s attention and emotions and can come to dominate a short news cycle or become be of more long-term interest. Especially in our emergent new media landscape, with the rise of social media and new sources of information, such media spectacles are playing an increasingly important role in politics. Kellner had already analyzed Obama in reference to his use of media spectacle, “blending politics and performance” (4). Media spectacle thus does not originate with Trump. However, Trump has especially benefited as “a successful creator and manipulator of the spectacle” (5). Indeed, Trump rode to his election success as one “whose use of the media and celebrity star power is his most potent weapon” (6).

As the host of The Apprentice, Trump had found a popular following, and one that had an interest in a “Trumpian pedagogy of how to succeed in the cut-throat corporate capitalist business world,” where “aggressive, highly competitive, and sometimes amoral tactics are needed to win and gain success” (8). Trump’s presidency attracted many of those who admired his alleged no-nonsense business background. In any case, Trump was able to draw on a popular base through a TV audience and to exploit that media, while at the same time mastering Twitter and using it to frame issues as he wanted and to draw attention to himself and incite emotions.

The Republican primary became a media spectacle dominated by Trump. Using inflammatory remarks on TV and Twitter to generate attention, by mid-June 2015, when he announced that he was running, through mid-July, “Trump was in 46% of the news media coverage of the Republican field, based on Google news hits; he also got 60% of google news searches.” Further academic research on this is being conducted. Trump, for his part, explained the attention he was getting: “RATINGS…it’s the ratings, the people love me, they want to see me, so they watch TV when I’m on” (11). This media saturation was a key to Trump’s election success.

While Trump was happy to use the media for his purposes, he was also undermining any media sources that were critical of him. As he noted: “The media is simply a business of distortion and lies…the press writes distorted and untruthful things about me almost daily” (qtd. 16). This attack on the media has by now become a refrain of the Trump administration. A part of his “branding” is to discredit any media messages that counter his own messaging.

In the early middle chapters of the book, Kellner moves from an analysis of Trump’s use of the media spectacle to an analysis of Trump and Trumpism that relies on the work of Erich Fromm and the Frankfurt School, especially their psychological analysis of authoritarian personalities. Wanting to avoid a too strict of comparison with the particularities of Nazi Germany, Kellner labels Trump not a fascist but an “authoritarian populist” (20)

An analysis of Fromm’s Escape from Freedom[image error] nonetheless shows that certain parallels between Trump and the earlier demagogues are clear. Like Hitler, Trump has organized a mass movement outside and critical of traditional party politics. Many of Trump’s base, whipped up by anger and rage, have a similar “idolatry toward their Fuhrer” to that shown by earlier supporters of dictators (21). Like such dictators, Trump presents himself as a quasi-magical leader, the only one who can set things right and “make America great again.” Much of his base adopts what Fromm characterized as “authoritarian idolatry.” Like various dictators, Trump plays on widespread “rage, alienation, and fears” (24). As in the context of those dictators, this generates an extremist support from his base. He may have correctly understood the fanaticism of his base when he stated, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and  I wouldn’t lose voters.”

Like various dictators, Trump presents a bleak view of the present political reality that resonates with his base and points to himself as the only possible leader who can allow escape from this bleak reality. However, he lacks the typical discipline of the well-known European dictators. Much of the time Trump plays on these emotions in apparently undisciplined Tweets or media outbursts.

Kellner approvingly quotes Evan Osmos’s analysis from The New Yorker of Trump’s unique brand of populism: “From the pantheon of great demagogues Trump has plucked some best practices — William Jennings Bryan’s bombast, Huey Long’s wit, Father Charles Coughlin’s mastery of the airwaves — but historians are at pains to find the perfect analogue, because so much of Trump’s recipe is specific to the present” (25). In Trump, the appeal to authoritarian populism is coupled with “celebrity politics.” Many of those in his “mobocracy” also simply find Trump quite entertaining (27-8).

Kellner refers to Fromm’s The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness [image error]as a further part of his personality analysis of Trump. Using the Freudian terms adopted by Fromm, he sees Trump as “the Id of American politics” (29) He is “often driven by sheer aggression, narcissism, and rage” (29). “Trump, like classical fascist leaders, has an underdeveloped superego” — understood as referring to the voice of conscience and morality (29). Kellner points to Trump’s Ego, “that has fully appropriated capitalist drives for success, money, power, ambition, and domination” (29). He proudly “brags of his ruthlessness in destroying competitors and enemies” (29). Unsurprisingly, from someone who seeks continual domination, he has few long-term friends and has numerous failed relationships.

Trump has the typical characteristics of the “authoritarian character,” as described by the Frankfurt School.  He displays characteristics of a sadist, described by Fromm as “a person with an intense desire to control, hurt, humiliate, another person” (30). He deflects blame continually and is extremely vindictive to those who have been critical of him. He also has the classical characteristics of a narcissist. As Fromm describes it: “Narcissism is the essence of all severe psychic pathology. For the narcissistically involved person, there is only one reality, that of his own thought, processes, feelings and needs. The world outside is not experienced or perceived objectively, i.e., as existing in its own terms, conditions and needs” (qtd. 31).

Kellner views Fromm’s psychoanalysis of Hitler as describing ” the authoritarian leader” in a manner that is “an uncanny anticipation of Donald Trump”: “he is interested only in himself, his desires, his thoughts, his wishes; he talked endlessly about his ideas, his part, his plans; the world is interesting only as far as it is the object of his schemes and desires; other people matter only as far as they serve him or can be used; he always knows better than anyone else. This certainty in one’s own ideas and schemes is a typical characteristic of intense narcissism” (qtd. 31). Similar depictions of Trump’s narcissism in the meantime proliferate. As Christopher Lasch notes: “diagnosis of Trump” has become “a kind of professional sport” (31). Not only are his narcissism and authoritarian character clear, but so is his “malignant aggression,” evident in his “spontaneously lashing out at anyone who dares to criticize him…” (33).

Much of the second part of the book chronicles instances in which Trump has exemplified some of the characteristics described and used the media as spectacle to whip up the emotions of his base. Here, we see Trump’s disregard for the facts and for standards of law play prominent and play well enough with his base. We see this in his incitement of his base at rallies throughout his campaign, where, for example, Trump offered to pay the legal bills of anyone who might be taken to court for beating up dissenters at his events, or where the crowds would recite “Lock her up” as kind of chorus to Trump’s references to “crooked Hillary.”

On display throughout his campaign and since are such appeals to violence or force. Not only was Clinton threatened with jail, but other forms of force were hinted at in innuendo. At one rally, where Trump talked of Hillary appointing judges, he noted first that there would be nothing that his people could then do, but then added, “Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.” The appeal to threats of violence clearly resonates with much of his base, again showing the tendencies not only of Trump but of his movement to authoritarian populism.

Another element shared with dictators is Trump’s desire to be taken at his word. A turn of phrase Trump continually came back to in his campaign was “Believe me!” — something Kellner sees as a “revealing sign of an authoritarian demagogue who wants his followers to [accept] his promises as binding and his Word as the Truth to which they must submit” (57).

To this is added his continual attack on the press. Like other demagogues, Trump has moved to undermine external criticism and the reliance of a narrative other than his own. Those who should believe him would better not have his messaging interrupted by the press. In line with this, Trump has not only recently brandished mainstream media as “fake news.” On his campaign, he also promised to open up libel laws, so that it would be easier to sue journalists. As Kellner notes “never before has a presidential candidate threatened to curtail freedom of the press or ban certain publications that criticize him from rallies and public events” (65).

Kellner wrote his book as the campaign had ended, with a focus on the campaign and the earliest days of Trump’s presidency. Since the publication of the book, Trump has shown little sign that he is letting up. In Charlottesville, where right-wing extremists killed a protester, Trump spoke of “some very fine people on both sides.” His attacks on the media have grown only louder, and increasingly been accompanied by attacks on the justice investigations and the court system. Trump undermines, thus, not only the fourth estate but the constitutional order itself in a way very similar to demagogues who the Frankfurt School analyzed.

As noted, much of the later part of Kellner’s book simply catalogs the instances in which Trump displayed his manipulation of the media and put his demagoguery on display. It was clear to Kellner when he finished the book that such a chronicling would need to continue. It does. The early sections of the book provide some tools to help in the analysis. At present, we are still moving down the road Kellner began to analyze and we can still conclude with him: “It is … worrisome to contemplate that Trump has developed a large following through his demagoguery and that authoritarian populism constitutes an American Nightmare and a clear and present danger to US democracy and global peace and stability.” Let’s hope the nation soon wakes up!