I tried to take a vacation and it lasted for about 24 hours – not my longest one, but not my shortest one either. What brings me back is an extremely troubling essay by Markos Molitsos. You can find it here. I would like you to read it and then we can talk about it. I would like to know what you think about it, because I find it very troubling and also having a good deal of truth in it. Now, I don't want you to post a three-part comment about some law case you are fighting or about a YouTube video you saw or about the reasons why you think Karl Marx is wrong about the labor theory of value. I would like you to read this essay and then we can have a discussion about it. If you have nothing to say about it, that is fine, just save your comments for some other time.
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Germany in the thirties had physical mobs making processions by torch light- America today has virtual mobs, people who do the damage from the "comfort' of their homes
That ad by Sen. Kelly Loeffler was very creative! I've never seen an ad like that in my life. It's like it came right out of the History Channel. This probably sounds nuts, but I think Loeffler got more support than Collins from that ad because of its creativity rather than from its political message of her moving more to the right than Collins.
That article is hogwash. There are ten times more urban blacks voting that are more than offsetting the redneck folks in the woods. Trump is getting votes because people feel more secure with him as president, its as basic as that. Comfortable people such as the author of the article and frankly bloggers here are tone deaf to the invisible people (to them) that are suffering and struggling daily and know a Biden presidency will damage them more. How many other administrations sent out 1200.00 to the little people? Many blacks are the true shy Trump voters, and all the basement dwellers (who comfortable people never see) in towns have easy access to the town polls, and they voted for Trump too. The author of this article mistakenly is calling the disenfranchised townies meth users, this is inaccurate, They do not have jobs and drink convenience store beer, and they are legion, and the all voted Trump. Hard working folks that get up early and work trades all voted for Trump. You academics and comfortable people all have the luxury to vote for Biden, they don't. Thats where all the votes are coming from. On a more serious note, Trump is damaging the country by not conceding, this may very well lead to the revolution the young college kids are speaking of. Trump is accellerating change the government always tries to avoid by placating the disenfranchished just enough. Not this time.
As you say, Kos’s essay has a lot of truth in it. But I find it troubling because it has a lot of opinionating mixed in with factual observations which are mostly factual.
Particularly troubling to me is his harping on about the “deplorables.” Hillary Clinton didn’t get very far with that kind of rhetoric. I doubt Kos will either. To be clear, I’m pretty certain there are some Trump voters who think pretty ugly thoughts and who wish some pretty horrid things would happen to many of their fellow citizens. I’m also inclined to believe that there are, sadly, too many out there whose lives are so very miserable they’ve fallen into extreme misanthropy and want everyone else to suffer and they’re doing their best to make that happen. But it seems to me Kos paints the situation with a very broad, non-discriminating brush.
So, yes, the Trump vote was numerically greater than it was in 2016. Since the numbers aren’t yet in, it has to be a guess on my part, that non-voting but eligible people again outnumbered, as they usually do, the number voting for the winning Presidential candidate. And even should I be wrong, I won’t be far off. Besides, since we’re all against voter suppression, shouldn’t we be (a) asking what is it that regularly suppresses so many from voting in this “great democracy”? and (b) shouldn’t we be celebrating that so many more people saw that there was some point to them voting this time?
Finally, it is troubling to me that Kos can do no more than rant against those whose “lives legitimately suck.” That he wants them all “to return to whatever dark crevices they emerged from” suggests to me that he too is a misanthrope (haunted by memories drawn from Wells’ story about the time machine). But, it may be responded, he’s our misanthrope. So what: Trump vs. Kos, each with their hatreds and their awful rhetoric. What a mess.
In early 2020, political Scientist Mark Blythe and hedge fund manager/journo Eric Lonergan published a short book of "dialogues" called Angrynomics that draws a distinction between "public" (justified) anger and "private" (unjustified) anger. That book explains the Trump election, Brexit, and other contemporary populist phenomena by reference to the political class's new-found leveraging of tribal identities derived from private anger to win votes in what the authors describe as an "anodyne" post-cold war neoliberal political consensus in western democracies.
For the purposes of this discussion, I would offer that Blythe and Lonergan's analysis supports Molitsos's conclusion that the folks who turned out for Trump this year but not for the Republican Party in 2018 did so primarily because Trump's rhetoric and his campaign appeal to people's sense of private anger and injury, rather than any particular political commitments; and also Trump's ability to convince these people that they are part of a "tribe" and that there is an "enemy" to oppose (China, Muslims, Immigrants, Socialists, etc.), thereby imparting a sense of meaning and agency to the "silent deplorables" who have been left behind in American society.
Unfortunately, the only way to address these people's grievances is to make their lives materially better - which requires either transfers of wealth via taxation or other policy approaches that the Republican Party - and most in the Democratic party - oppose. So I tend to agree that the conditions are ripe for another Trump to invade American politics, unless we are able to make material changes in our economy that are likely impossible in a government with a Republican-controlled senate and a 6/3 constitutional originalist majority on the Supreme Court.
What R McD says about the use of "deplorables" and then some.
What is "deplorable": a bunch of screwed-over people who voted for Trump because Trump claims to personify and represent their rage and resentment against an elite which they identify with the system which has effectively screwed them over or the system, backed by the elite, which has screwed them over?
I believe that we on the left should campaign to make the use of the word "deplorable" to refer to the typical Trump voter as politically incorrect as the use of the n-word.
Edit to the above: 6/3 conservative majority on the supreme court, as they're not all constitutional originalists.
Thanks for the reference, Ridiculous.... When they term the neoliberal political consensus "anodyne," I suppose they mean innocuous, intended to avoid giving offence; they don't mean serving to alleviate pain. In fact, I'd have thought, from what I know of his other observations on our times, that Blyth [sic] would hold that neoliberal politicians have imposed lots of pain. Do they, by the way, use public (justified) and the private (unjustified) or are justified/unjustified labels your elaboration? Either way, I don't get it.
Since you include a passing reference to Brexit, you might find this--https://tribunemag.co.uk/2020/05/no-holding-back --of interest. It is, actually, somewhat relevant to RPW's initiating query above, since it concerns an attmepted left fightback in the northern English communities destroyed by globalisation/neoliberalism.
R McD - yes, Professor Blyth's name is spelled without an "e" at the end.
Lonergan and Blyth use the terms "public anger" and "private anger" to draw a distinction between anger derived from collective moral outrage at things like racism, sexism, or economic subjugation - which are socially acceptable and "justified" - and private anger at one's own personal circumstances, which is not socially acceptable and is instead generally considered to be indicative of personal failure. The idea is that populists like Trump provide a platform for the aggrieved to collectively and publicly express their private anger and direct that anger towards "others", which explains Trump's appeal to those who have not traditionally taken part in the political process.
Blyth certainly does argue in the book that neoliberal politicians have imposed lots of pain. But he also argues that the post-cold war collapse of political identities pitting labor vs. capital into what is functionally a politics of bipartisan technocratic management has resulted in an "anodyne" politics where the differences between left and right political parties are materially insignificant to those beset by legitimate public anger and illegitimate private anger. According to Blyth and Lonergan, the solution is to identify the political means of addressing legitimate moral outrage (public anger) in a way that assuages illegitimate tribal grievances directed at others (private anger).
Thanks for the link.
The Pew Research Center, calls into question the weight of the truly independent voter.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/15/facts-about-us-political-independents/
It turns out that the 40% of voters who identify as “independents” are not really all that independent. 13%, in fact, are pretty much reliable Republicans, while 17% are fairly reliable Democrats. This leaves 7% — mostly young and male — who are politically unmoored. This is no great revelation in a polarized political landscape in which the “middle” has largely eroded.
This appears to be the cohort your article is looking at. This is the so-called Alt-Right.
Of these 7% only a third actually vote, which reduces the actual number of independent VOTERS to about 2.3% of the American electorate. For voting purposes, they are [normally] insignificant -- unless a new Hitler steps up to appeal to them. But in terms of a destabilizing mob of brownshirts, yes, I kind of agree with the author and with you -- that this is something to keep us awake at night.
David E.
If I understand Moulitsos correctly he argues that Trump's surprisingly good performance in the recent election was powered by a group he calls the 'hidden deplorables', who he takes it for granted are poor and White:
'The hidden deplorables aren’t Republican... They’re apolitical, otherwise ignoring
politics, because their lives legitimately suck. They live in meth country, with dim job
prospects... Institutions have failed them — corporations abandoned them for cheaper
labor overseas, government seems and feels distant, and it’s certainly not improving
their lives. Cities feel like walled gardens— unattainable, unaffordable, yet that’s
where all the jobs are, the culture, the action. These deplorables have been left behind.
So their attitude? “Fuck them all.” '
I particularly like the mention of lack of culture, as if the deplorables vote for Trump because the local opera house has closed. A tasty blend of liberal ideology and Marie Antoinette.
However, it directly clashes with the Washington Post article discussed by the Professor in his post of November 12th, 'A Big Deal', to the effect that poorer voters swung towards the Democrats and wealthier ones to the Republicans.
Furthermore, as far as I understand it from the UK, Trump improved his vote with ethnic minorities, but Biden did better than Clinton with White voters. This also does not support Moulitsos's explanation.
Thinking about his argument generally I am reminded of maybe Mencken's quip to the effect that every difficult question has an answer which is simple, clear and wrong. In this case we can probably say 'snobby' as well.
Having been invited, I am going to offer my two cents worth. And I, not surprisingly, disagree with Anonymous, R McD, and Ridiculousicculus, and actually agree (I think) with s. wallerstein. Kos’s analysis is spot on, and those who reject his analysis miss the point he is making. How does one explain that fact that Trump did absolutely nothing to improve the economic lot of those millions more who voted for him in 2020 than voted for him in 2016? They are aware that their economic plight is not better, and yet more voted for Trump. Why? Because in 2016 he was just a candidate who made economic promises which he did not keep, but what promises did he keep? He kept the promises that degraded others – he built the wall to keep those Mexican rapists out; he praised the Charlottesville white-supremacists as “good people”; he tore brown skinned children away from their parents. The promises he kept meant more to these people than the economic promises he did not keep. And these people are the deplorable losers who gain greater psychological gratification from seeing a bully tear into those whom they despise, the minorities they think are taking over the country they believe belongs to white Christians. R McD notes that using the word “deplorables” did not help Hillary Clinton. Of course not, because she was running for office and Kos is not. That does not mean that Kos’s analysis, and Hillary’s analysis is/was invalid. It just means you can’t call them out for what they are and expect to win an election.
So, where did these people came from? They were always there, but neither party had the standard bearer they could rally around. Trump offered them that standard bearer. The urge to destroy others when you are convinced that no economic policy is going to improve your life is very strong among this segment of society – and not just our society. The dog in the manger syndrome is as old as Aesop. In a comment I submitted a few posts ago I described a show I have been watching, Friend or Foe. I have noticed the following: the players make the following choices in increasing rates, from friend-friend, to friend-foe, to foe-foe. The largest proportion choose foe-foe, because they reason they do not want to risk being made a sucker if their team-mate chooses foe and takes all the money. They would prefer making their opponent the sucker, or neither taking home any money – if I can’t have it all, I would prefer that we both lose. That is the mentality of the increased number of people who voted for Trump. And why did they emerge only when Trump became the Republican standard bearer if they were always there? Because no prior Republican standard bearer spoke to their visceral need for revenge – not Reagan or either of the Bushes.
If they are always there, how to deal with them? By making sure that Trump, or someone using his playbook, does not obtain the nomination. There is talk that Trump is going to announce he is going to run again in 2024, but I believe he will be so tied up in civil and criminal litigation he will not be able to launch a viable campaign. Hopefully, the Republican Party, with Trump shackled by his legal problems, will not nominate another demagogue who will appeal to the large number of deplorables out there and they will just not vote. And we must not forget that Biden still won both the popular vote and the electoral college. If the Democrats do not take over the Senate, and the Republican Senate stymies his legislative agenda, it is imperative, as I have written in prior comments, that those who voted for Biden hoping for significant change and are disappointed, do not become disaffected so they do not vote again, because doing so will only result in ceding power to the Republicans, who will only make their lot worse. Sometimes you vote not to improve matters, but vote to prevent them from being made worse, so that you will live to fight another day when you can elect both a President and a Senate which will make your lives better.
Now, I want to tell you about this case I am litigating ....
Thanks for your elucidations, Ridiculousicculus . I think I now get the distinction. But I’m not sure how I should take it. If “private anger” is, as you indicate anger at one’s own personal circumstances “which is not socially acceptable and is instead generally considered to be indicative of personal failure,” doesn’t that then bring one to the question, why would people internalise their circumstances as a mark of personal failure? And why should others categorise something as personal failure rather than systemically occasioned failure? I know many people do just those sorts of things. But what leads them to do that with respect to themselves or to others? And wouldn’t it be as necessary to try to identify a political means for trying to turn some of that sense of personal failure or that categorisation of failure as someone’s own fault outwards, against what caused it? Such an approach is, I think, at least implicit in some of the other responses here.
R McD,
Right. The myth of the meritocracy just serves to justify and rationalize the status quo.
Even those of us who ostensibly are winners in the meritocratic race should be willing to recognize that there's no merit or lack of merit, that we're all products of our upbringing, our education, our parents' cultural level, our parents' socioeconomic level, etc.
Well, at 86 going on 87, this takes it out of a guy.
Professor, you're such a slacker.
You could be like Dianne Feinstein, who won't let her 87 years keep her from making sure Americans don't get Medicare For All and serious action on the climate crisis.
This political climate forces one to make a choice and the choices are the racist, homophobic republicans or the antifa democrats who will not even have a discussion about politics making them just as intolerant as republicans. So some voters go to Trump. Also some lifelong democrats have turned to republicans there is no denying. And the money people go to Trump also. Granted not all democrats are antifa but enough of them are to be a turnoff. Advantage Trump. And imagine Kamala playing monopoly: everyone starts ut the same but when one gets ahead you must give that money to the players with lesser. Then you compete some more and when one gets ahead you give the money back. Looting would be fine. Also, people who actually depend on the police for protection might vote for Trump. Thats where the votes are coming from.
In the first half of the twentieth century there arose a popular theory about the nature of moral judgments called "expressivism". According to expressivists, despite all appearances to the contrary, moral judgments do not seek to represent the world. The speaker of a statement like "Torture is wrong" does not mean that there is this thing, torture, that has this property, being wrong. Rather, she means something akin to "Boo torture!" (that is the version of expressivism proposed by the logical positivist A J Ayer). The utterance "Boo torture" just expresses a sentiment, it cannot be true or false.
When Trump supporters express their support for him and his policies, that is only a misleading surface reading. When they say "He has been good on the economy" it sounds like they are saying something that can be true or false. But they are not, they are saying "Hurrah Trump!". They are merely expressing their support for their team. Most of them don't have justifications for voting for them, just like we don't have justifications for supporting our favourite sports team.
Trump is the most divisive president in recent memory by a long ways. Hence it becomes increasingly necessary to pick a team. What team you pick will be usually determined by what team your friends and family picked. Most Trump voters have no concern for his policies at all. You could put a "not" in front of every position on his platform, changing it to its opposite, and they would support it if it is Trump's, because their support for Trump does not involves no evaluation, either of him or his opponents. This includes progressive policies, anti-racist policies, etc. There may be nothing more to Trump's enduring appeal than this.
Marian,
I think your explanation begs the question. You may be correct that the Trump supporters would support him regardless his policies. The question is, however, why, especially when many of his policies have not helped, but have actually hurt them? Why do they ignore this, and why are they attracted to the team/tribe led by Trump? The same question can be asked of those who supported Biden/Harris – why were they attracted to them? At least one can offer a rational explanation that they were anti-Trump, or they found the policies Biden/Harris espoused more favorable to their values. But how does one explain the increase in the number of Trump’s supporters between 2016 to 2020, when his economic policies did not improve their lot, and all he offered beyond his economic policies was an opportunity to trash, belittle and mock others? What is the explanation for his enduring appeal, as you put it? It is not helpful to say, well it is what it is, there is no explanation. When an individual has two options, and chooses one over the other, it makes sense to ask why did s/he prefer option A over option B, unless the answer is that there was no thought behind the choice, the choice was random. It does not appear to me to make sense, however, to say that people randomly chose Trump over Biden. So why did they do it? In his article, Kos was offering an explanation.
The choice of A over B may be the outcome of a lifetime of experience which cannot necessarily be summed up in a specific reason. Not being able to state a specific reason does not mean that the choice was irrational. I'd hazard that that's quite common in the case of almost all choices of a "political team" to support.
R McD:
You write, “If ‘private anger’ is, as you indicate anger at one’s own personal circumstances ‘which is not socially acceptable and is instead generally considered to be indicative of personal failure,’ doesn’t that then bring one to the question, why would people internalise their circumstances as a mark of personal failure?”
People internalize their circumstance as a mark of personal failure because in a society whose founding myth is that anyone who pulls themselves up by their bootstraps can become Jeff Bezos, people who fail to become Jeff Bezos have failed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, which is a mark of personal failure.
You also write: “And why should others categorise something as personal failure rather than systemically occasioned failure?”
Because the founding myth of America is that, notwithstanding slavery, Jim Crow apartheid, Viet Nam, etc., America is a systematic success that is impervious to systematically occasioned failure, but for “the other”.
You then write: “And wouldn’t it be as necessary to try to identify a political means for trying to turn some of that sense of personal failure or that categorisation of failure as someone’s own fault outwards, against what caused it?”
Yes, that’s a big part of the argument in Angrynomics – that Trumpism provides a political means for those who have internalized a sense of personal failure to direct that internal anger outwards, towards black people, Muslims, “socialists”, immigrants – an “other” who has stolen their god-given right to become Jeff Bezos. The solution is to redirect that anger towards the appropriate sources of systemic failure, i.e. the post-Cold War neoliberal consensus on managing a global market economy for the benefit of the top end of the income distribution.
MS:
You’re going to get yourself in trouble with Professor Wolff. The premise of Marian’s argument appears to be that Trump is such a divisive political figure that over time his existence necessitates that people pick a side even with minimal information, which causes some balance of voters whose friends and family support Trump to vote for Trump regardless of the implications of his policy agenda or political platform. You may think that’s a dumb argument, but it’s not a tautology.
To understand this moment in American history, I return once again to Horkheimer and other members of the Frankfurt School and their revelatory insights on demagogic fascism. Recall that like most demagogues, Trump is simply stating what he believes his base wants to hear -- regardless of his own beliefs. Self aggrandizement and power consolidation is the goal by any means necessary. The perpetual fabrication of a persecution complex communicates to his base that he is a warrior on their behalf against the "liberal elite" who they believe belittle them (aka deplorables) and feel alienated from. Trump is a lifelong performer. He is obsessed with ratings -- how to get higher ratings and how to effectively cultivate that. This part of the critique I fully understand. What still baffles me is how Trump the millionaire has become the champion of the downtrodden. Living in a gold-gilded high rise with his foreign born trophy wife and jet-setting between retreats and golf courses, how does he maintain the pretext as a champion of the poor and working class? I know first hand that many people believe that his wealth is a result of his economic genius -- something that many would like to possess or emulate. But how does that translate into believing that Trump is "on our side" or "one of us."? And why believe or ignore the constant lying? For crying out loud, Mussolini and Hitler came from (relatively) modest backgrounds so there was some degree of self-identity with the working class. Trump has none of it.
At the end of the political day, I think Marcuse was right. Capitalism has this uncanny ability to absorb and deflect -- even turn into strengths -- any and all critiques against it. Our quarrel, our investigations, lie not with Trumpism, but with that old foe capitalism. There is a quote that is sometimes credited to Frederic Jameson, other times to Slavoj Zizek, that I think goes a long way to explaining our predicament:
"It is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine a world without capitalism."
Unfortunately, I believe this statement to be true. Any doubters? Reread "The Power Elite" (1956) by C. Wright Mills. It reads like it was written last week. I see it repeated everyday in so many contexts. Oh well, buckle in. It will continue to be a rocky ride.
-- Jim
I found the column unhelpful. First, Trump's increased votes came from a lot of different places or groups. One was the Rio Grande valley.
Second, there was movement among the wealthier white groups towards Trump. Third, down-ballot Republicans did quite well - better than Trump in a lot of places. What is the explanation for that?
538.com has some analysis on polling, which suggests that the errors may be connected to voters who do not answer polling at all, not that they are shy about supporting Trump.
J. Bogart
J. Bogart,
You, like Marian, are begging the question. Explaining where Trump’s additional votes came from does not explain why those additional votes voted for him. That is the question which Kos is attempting to answer. The facts of Trump’s performance demonstrate that he did not help these people economically. So why did even more people vote for him, wherever the votes came from? A lot of Trump supporters, when asked why they supported him would qualify their answer by saying that they do not like his personal style, they don’t like his excessive tweeting, but .... What was the “but” which would convince so many people who claimed they did not like his personal style, did not like his excessive tweeting, to vote for him? You say you did not find Kos’s article helpful, but Kos was not trying to identify the demographics which increased Trump’s vote count from 2016 to 2020. He is asking why it increased in any demographics. Why would people who claim they do not personally like Trump vote for him? I believe that Kos does offer a credible explanation = they voted for him because his attacks on immigrants, his support of white supremacists, his bravura and braggadocio appealed to them. Are such people not deplorable? The question for Democrats, or progressives, or Marxists, is how do we counteract such a large segment of the population who are willing to vote for a demagogue whom they claim not to like personally? My answer is to give them a reason not to vote, by making sure that another candidate who appeals to such people does not obtain the nomination of either major party. And then ensure that the additional voters who came out to support Biden will continue to do so in the next election, even if he does not achieve his legislative agenda due to obstruction by a Republican Senate. Persuading them not to become disaffected by continuing to vote even in the face of their disappointment, in order to elect a Democratic Senate which will support a Democratic President. Those deplorables, who vote like the dog in the manger, will still be out there, waiting for someone they can rally around. They are not amenable to reason; they are not amenable to Christian values of love thy neighbor as you would have them love you. Is this sad and demoralizing? Yes, of course. But that is, I believe, the reality we are facing, and wishing it were different, and wishing people were more humane, bemoaning the fact that they exist – or denying that they exist and castigating people for calling them deplorable - is not going to change anything. One way to get rid of pests is to remove their food source. Don’t give these deplorables a candidate to vote for, and give the voters who came out to vote for Biden/Harris a reason to continue to vote, notwithstanding their disappointment in the short range – persuade them to play the long game. And, of course, this won’t be easy. But I don’t see any alternative, and as a popular book from the 60s said, we were never promised a rose garden.
Rediculousiculus,
I did not say that Marian was mistaken because she was expressing a tautology. Nor did I say she was offering a “dumb” argument. You are putting words in my mouth that I did not express. I said she was mistaken because she was begging the question – purporting to provide an answer which avoids the question being asked. Why would Prof. Wolff take me to task for stating this? Did what I wrote promote puerile feuding? I don’t think so.
The Rio Grande valley is predominantly Tejanos and Mexican-Americans. Trump made big gains there, so the racism story appears off track. If you ignore the demongraphics of his support I do not think you will get accurate analysis of the reasons he gained votes. And if you ignore the way down-ballot Republicans performed you will likely go wrong as well. Are these groups worse off? Do they think they are worse off? I am not saying that Trump did not pull white supremacists to the voting booth, just that the explanations of his electoral base does not stop at that.
A significant portion of Trump's support does consist of people who do not like his manner or him, but do like his (or the Republican) policies -- his judicial nominations, for example, his anti-labor policies.
We may have irreconcilable views about electoral politics.
J. Bogart
The fact that Trump increased his support in certain Hispanic communities, including the Rio Grande Valley, does not mean that the reasons they supported him were unrelated to his being a demagogue. The following is an excerpt from the Washington Post:
“U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-McAllen, won reelection by just three points after winning his last reelection in 2018 by more than 20 percentage points. He said his support for law enforcement and oil and gas did not help him in this month’s election.
“I think the party got penalized for being anti-law enforcement,” Gonzalez said. “People put up a sign next to one of mine in a rural area, and they had an arrow saying, ‘He’s a proud member of the party that wants to take your guns and oilfield jobs away.’”
“Gonzalez added, “I get criticized by the left for this — I’m, like, as pro-oil and gas and pro-military as you can be. By no means do I support the Green New Deal and [transitioning to clean energy] overnight.”
“Cuellar and Gonzalez both said the 2020 result was a Trump-specific phenomenon.
“Hispanics, especially Mexican Americans, they like this machismo, bravado, lucha libre-style politics — it’s like all-star wrestling, Trump style,” Gonzalez said. “It fits perfectly with the South Texas, Tejano person.”
The fact that an Hispanic voter, who is not a white supremacist, supported Trump because of his “machismo, bravado, lucah libre-style politics” does not mean that because s/he is not a white supremacist, but still found Trump’s demagoguery appealing, it is any less deplorable than its appeal to a white supremacist.
Why moralize everything?
I'm not even going to say that it's deplorable to call Trump voters "deplorable".
That's one positive thing about Marx (for me at least): he doesn't moralize, he analyzes. His analysis may be mistaken at times, but he shows us an alternative to moralism.
Moralism leads one into a sense of moral superiority and self-righteousness, which turns me off, to say the least. And if a Hispanic Trump voter reads this blog (they have Google too) and sees that they are referred to as "deplorable", they are going to keep voting for Trump or for whatever rightwing macho populist appears. Calling someone "deplorable" is not a way to win them over to your political position.
Finally, I'm not even going to claim that it's "better" not to moralize", since that would be a moralism of sorts, but moralism does turn me off. It of course doesn't turn everyone off and maybe the world will end up divided into moralizers and non-moralizers.
There's a famous debate, available in Youtube, between Chomsky and Foucault. Chomsky says that he's on the side of the oppressed because of his sense of justice; Foucault says that he's on the side of the oppressed because he's on their side. I agree with Foucault.
A philosophical tangent in response to s. wallerstein:
I find your position attractive and provocative but not quite satisfying.
You indicate that you are averse not only to moralism, but to moralizing against moralism. You may be tempted to explain: "It is for the sake of consistency that I don't moralize against moralism." I may be tempted to object: "Doing something for the sake of consistency is a form of moralism."
And the dialogue might continue:
"I don't refrain from anything 'for the sake of consistency,' but rather on account of sheer personal aversion."
"Why refute my objection unless for the sake of consistency? And why act consistently with your aversions, unless for the same reason?"
And it seems we could go on forever talking past each other.
Maybe at some point the non-moralist shrugs and says, "Like anyone, I choose to act in spite of the certainty that my beliefs are unfounded or inconsistent at several points, but 'for what it's worth' (i.e., on my view, nothing), I'm honest enough to admit this." And of course the moralist has a reply ready: "Your 'choosing to act' (and also your praising the honesty of your act) implies some action-guiding principles."
Seems unpromising, doesn't it? That's probably why Rorty proposes we simply change the subject!
Also, is there any way we could elaborate on what is meant by "a sense of moral superiority and self-righteousness?" Is there a clearer way of expressing this that doesn't use such expressions as "believing oneself to be better than others" (which purports to clarify "believing oneself superior," but circularly)?
A good point about insisting upon consistency being a form of moralism.
Since this is my Foucault day, let me quote him:
"Do not ask me who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and police to see that our papers are in order."
Continuing the tangent: I will say, in the non-moralist's defense, that the alternative position is unattractive in its own way. Non-moralism seems like a more honest and commonsensical way to face up to the fact that people's disagreements of value are often irresolvable and fruitless to argue about, and that when people are "right" about things, it's often by blind accident rather than insight. Also, "more honest and commonsensical" seems to mean something like: able to be expressed in everyday conversation without eliciting derisive laughter - and this, in my estimation, does not describe the sort of philosophical position (Platonism? Kantianism?) to which the moralist's arguments appear to lead.
But still: I "kind of suspect" (weasel words!) that it'd be impossible to act or deliberate or even communicate without tacitly accepting some standards of value, which - as standards of value - we believe are binding independently of the fact that we accept them. I guess the argument is just a matter of choosing which philosophical bullets to bite.
Thanks for indulging the tangent. I don't have anything to add re. Trump voters.
NYT has some comments on this as well.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/16/opinion/liberal-media-censoring.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
I'm not a philosopher, by the way.
It seems that it's one thing for me to have certain standards of value which guide how I act and it's another thing for me to preach those standards to others and/or to tell them that they're deplorable or evil or wrong when they don't accept my standards.
Now there are laws which impose certain standards on everyone and I'm in favor of laws, but
otherwise, I feel weird about telling others that my standards are good and theirs are evil or deplorable.
s. wallerstein and Enam el Brux,
Sorry, Marx does not moralize, he analyzes? When he writes “Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains,” is he not claiming that the workers are figuratively, if not literally, enslaved by their employers, and that slavery, as we all know, if not evil, is a rather unkind thing to do to your fellow man, literally and figuratively, and therefore the employer who figuratively enslaves you is being rather unkind. Is this not a moralistic assertion?
One who claims he prefers not to engage in moralizing, but rather prefers making objective observations about world affairs, is seeking to clothe his statements in the mantle of scientific objectivity, giving them an air of superior legitimacy. Saying that the atomic weight of a carbon atom is 12.0096 is a scientific statement; saying that light travels at the speed of 299792458 meters per second in a vacuum is a scientific statement. To suggest that one’s observations about world affairs and social interactions have the same degree of objectivity as scientific statements is a form of faux self-aggrandizement.
And Enam, what do you mean when you say “moralizing is factually unhelpful”? Surely, everyone who reads this blog believes that slavery – literal slavery – is evil, and that those who endorse or engage in it are immoral. This is not a scientific statement, but it is surely a moralistic statement of fact. On what basis do those who believe, believe it?
When Chomsky says he is on the side of the oppressed because of his sense of justice, he is making a moral, normative statement. What is wrong with that? And when Foucault responds that he is on the side of the oppressed because he is on the side of the oppressed, this is a meaningless assertion. Is he on the side of the oppressed for the same reason that he prefers cherry pie over apple pie, that it is just a matter of individual taste? And is whether one is opposed to slavery, or supports slavery just a matter of taste, not a matter of right and wrong?
Most of the people commenting in this thread agree that those who supported Trump in some sense got it wrong, that as between Biden and Trump, the better way to use one’s the right of suffrage to vote for Trump did something inferior to those who used their right of suffrage to vote for Biden? Why? S. wallerstein, I have read some of your comments which have been disparaging of Trump, and of his supporters. When you make these remarks, don’t tell me that you are not preaching your standards to others. In believing this, are you just making a judgment that voting for Biden was scientifically, objectively better than voting for Trump? Or deep down, are you not making a moral judgment that Biden is a morally superior person to Trump, and that Trump is a morally inferior person to Biden, and therefore, if you vote for a morally inferior person over a morally superior person, there is, basically, something wrong with your morals. Now, you may prefer not to insult the Trump voter by not calling him/her deplorable, but to say you are not making a moral judgment seems to me to be a form of disingenuosness. (This is not an ad hominem comment. It is an analytically critical comment.)
Post-Script:
What I have written above is obviously inconsistent with Hume’s ethical philosophy. I reject his assertion, “The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason.” I believe the principle, “Do not unto others what you would not have them do unto you” is a morally valid statement, and one amenable to rational analysis. Lincoln’s assertion, “Just as I would not be a slave, I would not be a slave owner,” is a morally valid assertion, amenable to rational analysis. G. E. Moore was an ethical intuitionist, who believed that we are born with an innate sense of right and wrong, and that what is morally “good” is not subject to definition.. This does not entail that moral judgments are not rational judgments. Experiments with infants – before they have had a chance to be socialized into believing in right and wrong - have borne this out. When shown videos of children being mean to others, refusing to share their toys, for example, even infants have shown an unfavorable response to the selfish child depicted in the video. There is nothing wrong with moralizing. The question, instead, is, what morals are you moralizing about.
MS,
I'm simply trying to clarify my position in dialogue with others. No doubt that I make moralizing statements from time to time.
Still, if I look at myself, I can make a genealogy of my own morality and see how contingent how accidental, how dependent on chance happenings in my biography my moral statements are.
There's a path in my political and ethical biography that obviously begins at birth, with my childhood and my parents, but defines itself by the very chance event that I happened to walk to high school by the exact same route as M.C., the school beatnik and commie, the only one in the whole school and little by little we became friends and little by little, I began to see much of what happens in society from his point of view. He recruited me to participate in CORE, Congress on Racial Equality, and I made new friends there and my first girl friend and so on and so on.
The only basis of my values is my biography and my biography is the product of chance and the people I've come into contact with.
s. wallerstein,
What you have written says nothing about the merit or lack thereof of your moral views. It just explains how you cam to those moral views. We have all followed a different itinerary through life, and have acquired our moral views via different ways. None of this evaluates the rectitude of those moral values. And, according to G.E. Moore, your moral values are more a product of inherent intuition than on whom you walked to high school with. My point was, that when you claimed that you do not moralize, and do not judge others according to your moral lights, you were not being sincere.
On a separate note, on the ethical principle “Do not do unto others what you would not have others do unto you,” this version is distinctly different from the alternative version, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The former version is proscriptive, the latter prescriptive. The latter is making a moral judgment based on what you fail to do. I believe this is an unacceptable form of moralizing. I do not say of those who failed to vote for Biden, perhaps by not voting at all, that their failure to vote, to take action, was immoral. I would prefer that they not vote at all, rather than vote for Trump. As for those who did vote for Trump, I would say that their vote violated the proscriptive form of the principle, and is therefore morally indefensible. I would have preferred that they, too, had not voted at all, rather than voting for Trump.
MS
Another somewhat friendly word, if I may. It seems to me s.w. isn't trying to muzzle you. I think he's trying to say that he finds your interventions distracting and, so far as he's concerned, beside his point. From that perspective, to be charged with attempted muzzling comes across as quite aggressive, don't you think?
s.w. Why don't you just skip MS's comments?
Pax vobiscum, r
R McD,
Thanks.
Vidal's novel, "Burr", is great. There was a really good review of that book in the old, "Encounter" magazine, back in '76 or so. Though the review was unsigned, I'm pretty sure it was by Christopher Hitchens. . My favorite second of Vidal's works is called, "Julian".
jeffrey, we'll be having none of your apostasy!
Anonymous at 7:04,
Very funny. Apostasy indeed. How dare he.
Wallerstein, not wasserstein. God forgive me my inadvertent faux pas.
MS:
We’ve all got our own peculiar conversational styles, I suppose. And I further suppose that someone’s style may grate on others. My own private peeve is that I, in my own opinion, sometimes say the most profound things or offer the most interesting information, only to have it fall like a lead balloon. I think I understand that you’re driven to achieve clarity and to be precisely understood and that you want to press others in the same direction. But you surely know that that ssort of thing isn’t everyone’s cup of tea—I’d guesds many others who come here want to be playful or outrageous or what you will. But they can’t require everyone to be playful or . . . And you and others who want a certain other style of conversation can’t actually achieve that. But then, I’m afraid, there’s the way conversational differences are responded to. I don’t mean to get at you, MS, but what did you expect the response would be when you say to someione, “It is you with whom one cannot have an adult dialogue.” Note, I’m not resuming the entire exchange; I don’t know how it began to get testy. But that isn’t the point, is it? It takes two to tango, if you’ll excuse the cliche.
Anyway, although I often fail to live by it, I’m rather partial to Cromwell’s advice, “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, consider that you might be mistaken.” I can’t forgo mentioning that on one occasion, when the citizens of the Scottish town of Dunbar (John Muir’s birthplace) did not consider that they might be mistaken, he massacred them.
R McD.
I appreciate, in all sincerity, your explanatory words and efforts at mediation. The question is not, I submit, how I thought s. wallerstein would react to my assertion that it is not possible to have an adult dialogue with him. The question, I submit, is how did s. wallerstein think I would react to his precedent assertion, “[W]ith you no dialogue is possible because once again you insult me, accusing me of "not being sincere" when actually, I'm being very sincere.” I was writing in all seriousness about whether one can make legitimate moral judgments regarding the astounding number of new voters who voted for Trump. I regarded this as a legitimate subject of ethical and political discussion, and I was confronted by s. wallerstein with the opinion that it is never appropriate, that Marx would not do such a thing, and that he himself never did such a thing, as if to say that moral judgments have no rational validity. So I called him out on this. He took this position, on a blog devoted to analytical thought. If you take such a position – indeed any position – it seems to me you should be prepared to defend it, and not accuse someone who challenges the validity of your position of being insulting. And yes, I do value highly the accuracy and persuasiveness of the written word, and I would think that on a blog such as this, its premium value would be applauded and emulated.
Let me say, although I regard Oliver Cromwell as a significant and fascinating historical figure, his exhortation “in the bowels of Christ,’ would not be particularly compelling for me. I am somehow not surprised that his actual deeds belied his religious commitment. Such conduct appears to have happened a lot among religious zealots, the execution of Michael Servetus at the hands of John Calvin being one of the more egregious examples.
Regarding the humility to admit one’s mistakes, I have in fact admitted my own errors on this blog on more than one occasion, even to s. wallerstein, when I mistakenly stated that Hannah Arendt had edited a volume of essays many years after she had already died.
Can we not just stop? As i offered, it doesn't really matter who began it or how it began.
Again, pax vobiscum. r
MS:
From the context of s. wallerstein's post it was pretty clear to me that he didn't accuse you of a general lack empathy. The guy drew a distinction between his reasons for participating in the blog - to explore his own philosophical and political ideas and commitments with others in a collegial environment - to your approach to commenting on the blog, which is generally adversarial and argumentative and about establishing your intellectual authority or whatever. And sw pointed out that your lack of empathy for his approach to the comments section of the blog makes you incapable of engaging in meaningful dialogue with him. That's a fair observation, and it has nothing to do with your career as an attorney.
Also, since you claim that the term "gunner" was used at you law school back in the 70's or whatever, you should be aware that merely being good at your job as an advocate, or for that matter being good at law school exams, isn't what makes you or anyone else a gunner. What makes you a gunner is your insistence on turning every discussion into a mock trial, your repeated and unsolicited monologues about the awesome things that you do or think about that serve little purpose other than to try to convince others that you're an authority on everything, and your apparent cluelessness with respect to social cues that most people pick up on even through text on the internet. You're "that guy" who wants to be the teacher's pet and the center of attention and perceived as smarter than everyone else.
You also have a habit of misreading what people write and making predictions about who they are, what their professional background is, their motivations for writing something, and what they think. That doesn't necessarily make you a gunner. But it does make you kind of a jerk.
An observation from one of the 'silent majority', who as Professor Wolff pointed out 10 days ago "do not comment at all".
MS (rightly) pointed out the behaviour he observed in a game show, Friend or Foe:
"The largest proportion choose foe-foe...[t]hey would prefer making their opponent the sucker...if I can’t have it all, I would prefer that we both lose."
"Sorry, R McD, I cannot stop given s. wallerstein’s gratuitous claim that I lack empathy. And if this comment constitutes puerile feuding and gets me bsanned [sic] from Prof. Wolff’s blog, so be it"
Perhaps that first observation about the show Friend or Foe is more widely relevant than just understanding the motivation of Trump voters. I for one am very aware that I must fight urges to engage in that sort of behaviour, and it seems that some of the regular commenters on this blog have similar urges! "So be it" indeed...
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