U.S. Election Aftermath, Part One
Yesterday, I wrote in my U.S. Election Day post that I was pleased to have the opportunity to set aside the thunderous climax of the flatulent election coverage (Republican tribe version), in favor of enjoying lunch and some reading time with a young friend here in Korea, a philosophic student of mine, who had offered to bring salad and doughnuts to my office. After her visit, I informed her that I had immortalized her visit in anticipation by referring to it on my website. Later in the day, having read my short post, and being relatively unfamiliar with the details of U.S. politics (as a young thinking person ought to be), she replied with a few written reflections of her own, to which I subsequently responded.
I offer the essentials of our correspondence below.
Student: First, I’m happy to distract you from the election even for a while. Not because I think politics are unimportant matters and an election is not a noteworthy event, but merely because the relevant people seem noisy.
Teacher: Well, your understanding, which I know is based on my words combined with your own undeveloped observations, is quite correct. “Noisy” is just the right word. And “relevant” is a kindness to them. You meant “relevant” to the election story itself, of course, so it is the correct word. I just mean that they are irrelevant in every way other than in relation to popular entertainment, which is what modern “news” really is. They are perfectly irrelevant to thinking, truth, history, and above all, serious politics.
Student: When I looked at the candidates on TV this morning, I was somehow reminded of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln. They are simply the former presidents whom I can name, and I just imagined that all of the U.S. presidents are having a banquet together. I also wondered: “What would the former presidents think about the latter presidents?” “Would they be proud of them?” “What would they think about America at this moment?”
Teacher: Sure, those are the three presidents you would have heard about in school textbooks or Korean TV programs about American history. Plus, in your lifetime, Barack Obama of course. And those three you named are among the most important and greatest. Or rather, Washington and Lincoln are extremely important leaders in the history of democratic politics. Jefferson is not always viewed as a great president, but is more consequential for his great contributions to the Independence movement before the country was officially born, and ultimately for writing the Declaration of Independence, which established the founding spirit of the United States, years before the country developed its Constitution. “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” is a sentence that no one in modern politics could ever say with conviction, except as propaganda. “We all know America is racist” would be a typical example of such propaganda. Jefferson spoke like a serious thinker and statesman. Today, American politics is ruled entirely by people trying to get money and power for themselves by stealing it from others.
If there were a banquet with all the dead presidents around the table, and they were looking down on today’s U.S. scene…well, I generally try not to speculate on what famous individuals of the past would say about today, because it’s often used as an easy way of making one’s own judgments look more legitimate. “Jefferson would think Trump is an idiot” is often just a deceptive and sophistical way of saying, “I think Trump is an idiot.” (It is sophistical because I am trying to persuade people to accept my opinion not with rational arguments, but by appealing to their unthinking respect for a “great man” of the past. “I mean, you wouldn’t want to disagree with the judgment of Thomas Jefferson, would you?” But of course, since Jefferson never met Trump, you are not disagreeing with Jefferson, but only with me, since I am the one using an imaginary Jefferson as my mouthpiece.)
However, asking what people of the past would think of people today can be made legitimate, if we give direct reasons or evidence to support our use of their names. So let’s play this game for a moment, just using the three presidents you cited.
First of all, since all three of those men were famous defenders of the U.S. Constitution, and Washington actually signed that document (Jefferson was in France as a diplomat at the time), it is fair to assume that they would regard Kamala Harris as completely illegitimate. She is essentially a socialist progressive in her policies (or rather is controlled by socialist progressives), and socialist progressivism contradicts the constitutional principles of the United States on the most fundamental levels. It denies private property, it limits freedom of association and speech, it rejects the moral premises of individual responsibility, and most generally, it completely obliterates the principle of constitutionally limited government that is the heart of the American founders’ definition of freedom. In political terms, they believed freedom meant freedom from the government. Therefore, the purpose of their Constitution (the founding laws on which all other laws must be based) was to clearly define the exact duties and authorities of the federal government, and to declare that the government must not stretch its powers beyond those directly stated in the Constitution. Today, the U.S. government has erased every one of those constitutional limits and expanded government power to a range that those three dead presidents would find unthinkable. Kamala Harris would happily expand the powers further, and was promising to do so. This makes her fundamentally an opponent of the American founding, so they would have no patience with her.
As for Trump, he has also shown a total lack of knowledge of, or respect for, the U.S. Constitution. Aside from his policies, which are often ridiculous when they are not directed by others, he is always trying to divide people, to create opposition and hatred, and to benefit from people’s tribal anger, these being the basic weapons of demagoguery, which is the great danger in any democracy. Demagoguery (which we now euphemize as “populism”) is the transitional stage between democracy and tyranny. That’s the primary danger Trump represents. When Washington, the first president, reached the end of his second term in office, many people wanted him to continue for another term, because he was the most admired man in the country, not to mention that he was also the general who led the American army against the British in the War of Independence. He refused, because he said the most important thing was the country and its laws, not himself. This is often cited as the greatest example of noble leadership in a democratic context – putting the country’s good above his own advantage in the most direct manner. Donald Trump feels exactly the opposite way, and even tried to use illegal methods to overturn the results of the previous election, because, like a poorly raised child, he couldn’t accept the shame of losing.
And then there is the incredibly low tone and vulgar language that Trump has helped to normalize in American politics. In general, I believe those three dead presidents would barely recognize their country in today’s America. I am not talking about technology and material progress. I mean the lawlessness and corruption of modern politics, in addition to the infantilization and vulgarization of public discourse. They were men of the utmost seriousness. Donald Trump might almost be the definitive example of an unserious man.
Student: The candidates are giving a speech on a grand platform, in a confident manner and with a large crowd, but still I couldn’t find an aura of greatness. Where is dignity? Where is gravity?
Teacher: There isn’t any, of course. Democratic politics always had roughness and incivility. But those weaknesses are relative. There was at least an understanding among the best leaders of the past that the country’s well-being was the goal, and that civil discussion and respectful argument were the proper means to that goal. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are to Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln what a gnat is to an eagle. They buzz around annoyingly and eat the roots that others have planted, but they cannot soar above things, and they have no bird’s-eye vision of the whole.
Student: Are they leaders trying to serve their country or ones trying to defeat the other?
Teacher: George Washington, in his Farewell Address, made some very important observations about the conditions necessary to preserve the free republic he had helped to bring into being. Probably the most interesting of these observations, and the one that demonstrates how far modern politics has descended from Washington’s time, was his strong warning against the danger of allowing political parties to gain too much power, such that elections become tribal competitions between large, money-based organizations, and therefore lose their proper focus on shared principles of liberty and the character of the individual candidates. Needless to say, we are seeing the most extreme violation of Washington’s warning today, and certainly not only in the United States, but throughout the democratic world. A party is a power-seeking entity which has winning elections as its increasingly exclusive aim, with increasingly little regard for the higher aims that true statesmanship and the preservation of freedom demand.
Student: Where is a serious discussion? What about refined language? What happened to all of these things? Why can’t I admire them, somehow?
Teacher: Serious discussion requires serious political thinking, which requires a deeper understanding of principles and a genuine desire to persuade and improve things, rather than merely to win a contest or gain material advantage by any means necessary. And in an age as illiterate and inattentive as ours, no one could win by offering serious discussion, because no one would listen to such a person. One of the most wistful feelings about modern politics comes from considering the writings and speeches of men like Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, and imagining how few modern people could even understand what they were talking about, let alone admire them for their sobriety and detached dignity. More than fifty percent of American voters just voted for a man who talks like a poorly educated ten-year-old. The other forty-nine percent voted for someone who can barely say anything at all without a script, because she doesn’t know where she is or what she is there for.
Student: I took the example of U.S. candidates, but I am not limiting the problem only to their situation. I cannot exempt Korean politicians, for example.
Teacher: The problem is universal today, throughout the democratic world. It isn’t better in the undemocratic world, but the problems are different there. There is, as you say, no honor, and this is the result, partly, of our moral relativism and materialism. If there is no objective “good and evil,” then the concept of honor makes no sense. “Doing the right thing” only applies if there is a specific right thing. And in a world where everyone believes that personal advantage is morality, and comfort is king, we have all become cynical about such things as honor and decency. They are just poses and vested interests too, aren’t they? Isn’t honor for “losers,” as Trump would call them?
Student: Politicians want to be a celebrity. Scholars do not go further than being followers. Parents try to be their children’s buddy. Students study hard to have a promising occupation.
Teacher: These are great points to make in this connection. Look at your examples. What underlying premises do they all have in common? This: That all humans and their various goals are basically the same (equal), that better and worse are illegitimate ideas, and therefore that being successful can only mean (a) being liked by many other people, (b) being appreciated within the established tribes of today, and (c) having enough material goods to feel comfortable and the same as everyone else. As for parents wanting to be friends to their children, that highlights an essential idea of all democracy, which Socrates talks about in The Republic, namely that in democracy, the new is always considered better than the old, and therefore young people think they are better than their parents. And, for the same reason, parents tend to feel that the children (being younger) are right, and therefore wish to be accepted or liked, rather than admired or even slightly feared, by their children, whereas parents used to believe it was their responsibility not to be “buddies” for their children, but to teach them by example how to become mature adults and to respect the past or the traditions. Democracy essentially rejects the past and traditional ways. Some traditional ways deserve to be rejected, but to reject everything “old” merely because it is not new is a recipe for losing your whole civilization and its heritage. That’s us.
