We're In for a Very Bumpy Ride

I am troubled by the present rhetoric in the news that has defined Trump’s victory to be the result of his appeal to those who have felt left out of the process, left out of government’s concern, left out of the culture of the nation, basically to those who feel they have lost and are yet losing power. The analysis seems to offer a philosophical position that attributes the election by an electorate of an autocrat angered that their position of power has been usurped by the population over which they have once asserted power. This idea has appealed, of course, to the supporters of the red-hatted movement to Make America Great Again, when people like them would again assume power and order the nation’s priorities: they are to a large extent white, male, Christian (leaning to the evangelical) gun-toting, working class, macho citizens. These are Trump’s legions. I have wondered exactly when was America great in the first place: during the genocide of Native Americans? the time of the burning of accused witches? during the days of slavery? or the time of the Japanese internment at Manzanar? What about the days when America ignored the actions of the Nazis in the horrors perpetrated in the death camps? What about during the era of Jim Crow and legal segregation, or the days of public misogynistic declarations and gender discrimination by the general public and elected officials? What about during the Vietnam, Afghan and Iraq Wars? When exactly was American great? But, advocates of the Make America Great Again are the same people who chose to vote for a convicted criminal who was twice impeached, whose language in campaign speeches would not be the kind of talk that would be permitted by their children; who spewed repulsive calumny on his opponents and swore to revenge those who he claimed to be disloyal to him, the country be damned; who has declared that he would be a dictator on Day 1, and has reportedly said that he would from jail release into the streets the felons who have been legally convicted of violence and insurrection and who threatened the nation and its representative in their attack on the Capitol in their Trump-inspired attempt to prevent the peaceful and lawful transfer of  power on January 6, 2021. No, there are not good folks on both sides.

In his essay on Tolstoy’s theory of history, “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” Isaiah Berlin refers to a Greek saying: “The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Berlin distinguishes between these two views: the fox, he says, “pursues many ends unrelated or even contradictory, connected if at all only in some de facto way for some psychological or physiological cause, related to no moral or aesthetic principle.” These are the people whose thought explores a variety of avenues, whose vision is varied , unsettled, and supple. The fox acknowledges, since “we cannot legislate for unknown consequences of consequences of consequences,” and hence remains open to several possible paths in every situation. Not relativist but as Berlin attests, pluralist. Pluralism, he writes, “is the conception that there are many different ends that men may seek and still be fully rational, full men, capable of understanding other and sympathizing and deriving light from each other.” The pluralist is Tristram Shandy. The hedgehog, however, says “I know the only true path to the ultimate solution of the problem of society, I know which way to drive the human caravan; and since you are ignorant of what I know, you cannot be allowed to have liberty of choice even with the narrowest limits, if the goal is to be reached,” The hedgehog relates everything to a single vision, to one system,—"a single, universal organizing principle in terms of which alone all they are and say has significance.” Trump and his followers are hedgehogs, and the red hat is the symbol of the one, single vision. 

            Trump’s actions of late—his cabinet picks—are not the exercise of prudent government formation, but rather, the actions more like a host handing out invitations to a private party. The choices he has made for cabinet appointments are to those of his friends who have remained loyal to him through all his lies and misdeeds, are those who  little experience for the positions to which they have been nominated, and at least one of them, Matt Gaetz, has has already withdrawn his nomination because he has been accused of serious ethical and even criminal violations. Gaetz who had been nominated with barely two year’s experience as a lawyer had been picked to be the nation’s chief legal officer. Robert Kennedy Jr. has been chosen to occupy the Department of Health as Secretary of Health? He is the man who decries vaccinations that have proven effective in combatting disease, who advocates for unsafe raw milk and demands the removal of fluoride form the water despite a mass of evidence proven its effectiveness in dental care. Peter Hegseth had been chosen to head the Department of Defense despite the fact that he has no experience—and probably very little knowledge—in the workings of the military or its administration. Besides, like his boss, he, too, had been accused of sexual assault. His boss has been already convicted of this crime! And now we have the nomination of Linda McMahon to be Secretary of the Department of Education, a department that Trump has promised to eliminate. Her qualifications: Linda McMahon led the Small Business Administration during Mr. Trump’s first term and is a former chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment! I wonder when was the last time she even visited a school?

No, there are only friends invited to this party and not competent officials. And where are the Black and Latino men and women who Trump demanded he receive their vote. The invites were selective. Like a drunken fraternity affair, this party should prove raucous and destructive.