“The future does not belong to the globalists. As president of the United States, I will always put America first. Just like you, as the leaders of your countries, will always and should always put your countries first."
Donald Trump, to the UN general assembly, Sept, 2017
Give Trump credit. He has a coherent world view.
I consider it a dangerous and incomplete one.
I got valuable insight into this Trump era by listening to a professor talk about Adolph Hitler. Hitler, too, had a world view. Timothy Snyder discusses it as intellectual history, not as polemic. I am not claiming that Trump is Hitler. I am saying that Trump and Hitler share a dog-eat-dog view of the natural state of existence.
Timothy Snyder is a History professor at Yale. He is America's foremost scholar of Eastern Europe. Yale makes audio recordings of the 23 lectures in his survey class on Ukraine available free to the public. A video version is free on YouTube. It is like being in college again, but without the tuition, tests, or needing to live in New Haven.
Hitler understood that communism aspired to be an international movement. International movements are contrary to Hitler's idea of the true meaning of a nation, a people with a common race, culture, and language. Hitler perceived Jews to be a separate people, loyal to their tribe, and therefore a pathogen inside Germany. He saw the rich farmlands of the Slavic countries to the east, especially Ukraine. Hitler considered human history to be an endless struggle for land and resources. He considered the Slavic people living there inferior and weak, so Germany would take it.
Hitler wanted to duplicate our treatment of America's indigenous people. Between disease and warfare, we killed nearly all of them and took their land. He thought it the natural order of things. What was un-natural were rule-based constraints.
Trump isn't Hitler. But nor was Hitler. Hitler wasn't the "Hitler" of our later understanding until after 1940. Trump and his supporters have a notion of the "real" American people, but Americans won't tolerate the open racial talk that Hitler employed. Indeed, Trump's strongest supporters insist that their critics are the racists. Trump wanted to buy Greenland, not take it from the Danes.
My observation today is that Trump has an understanding in common with Hitler that rules-based constraints on power are unnatural. It shows up in flouting rules. Trump was openly critical of Jeff Sessions' having obeyed rules requiring him to recuse himself from the investigation of the Russian connection to the Trump campaign. Everyone in the GOP leadership understood that Sessions was right, but no one dared cross Trump. Mitch McConnell's refusal to let Obama fill a Supreme Court seat, and then rushing through the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett, was on-brand for a GOP. It was brazen hypocrisy, but it could be done and therefore should be done. Trump's open and public effort to overturn the 2020 election nudges the boundary of what is acceptable for GOP voters. It troubles some, but not others. An overwhelming majority of Republicans like the result, but it had too little pretext of legality. Americans weren't prepared for such a blunt assertion of doing something just because you can get away with it. Trump is resolute, saying his effort to get Georgia's Raffensperger to change the vote was "perfect." Trump is resolute saying the Vice President should have awarded the election to him. No serious legal scholar agrees, and yet there is the temptation of stolen fruit for GOP voters. It's natural. Lions do not cooperate with antelopes. Lions kill and eat antelopes. Marquess of Queensbury rules of sportsmanship are for suckers.
There is another view. Humans survive because of social bonds, with rules of behavior. Rules make us human. There are language rules, cultural norms, notions of courtesy, and formal laws. Humans punish outlaws. Anarchy is not a stable equilibrium state; power is too disorganized and incoherent. Peace has not proven to be a stable equilibrium state, either. Nor is war. Wars end. New arrangements are established for a time, then they break down. Humans cycle into war and peace. My sense of the nature of human conflict is that ambitious leaders will always emerge to end a peace.
But now the consequences of open war are mutual suicide, so a rules-based peace is our best option. Indeed, the only one.
12 comments:
Everybody has a world view, and the First Amendment gives them the right to express it. The parallel to Hitler is Trump's conviction that he has the right to impose it, even at the cost of our Republic. Like Hitler, he also has a lot of support – basically the entire Republican Party. Sure, there are a few self-proclaimed “rational Republicans,” apparently oblivious to the oxymoron, who say they like Trump’s policies but not his style. They might as well say they like his actions but not his behavior. Trump’s primary policy is imposing his will on others; everything else is corollary.
It's truly sickening to see so many Americans so enamored of a madman with such obvious contempt for America's founding principles.
I think what you and Prof. Snyder are describing is civilization.
As a species we are in the process of creating an evolution of the "natural order", which is exactly as you point out; "survival of the fittest", "law of the jungle", "might makes right", et al. What we can't yet know for sure is exactly where we are in that process, and where we are heading, though a peaceful, safe and prosperous World is the ideal. I'd point out that the very concept of "peace" is a human invention at odds with how we came to dominance. The lion behaves as it does because it can't conceive of an alternative.
A wise man recently pointed out to me that it's altogether possible that human intelligence is a mutation that will lead to our extinction. While that may be true, the opposite is also realizable. What is required is what has always been necessary for progress; recognizing and abandoning the primordial past.
Perhaps, hopefully, future generations will look back to this era much in the same way we look back on prehistory with its superstitions and myths, ignorance and fears.
Monkeys will kick out brazen rule breakers or shun them to such an extent that the monkey acknowledges its wrongdoing. Trump will never acknowledge his wrongdoing, he will require permanent shunning. Might makes right, but only up to a certain point. I think Trump went past that point as did Hitler.
There is also the social contract. We boomers have thoroughly broken that with our progeny, and subsequent generations. It used to be we will educate you, and you will take care of us in old age. Thoroughly broken by us. No wonder that Gen X, Gen Y (the millennials) and Gen Z can hardly wait for us to die. We boomers are the ones to blame for a vast amount of social ills. I read "The Fourth Turning" by Howe & Strauss in the first decade of this century. The premise is there's an 80 year (+or-) rhythm to the United States (The Revolution, the Civil War, and World War 2 are all roughly 80 years apart). The next 80 year interval is upon us. There is also a "personality" to each generation. We boomers are the mystical. There's also the forgotten, the angry, and the doers. The millennials and GenZ are the angry and the doers. The authors of the book theorized that there would be a facist attempt at a takeover of the USA, due to corrupt capitalists and that Gen Z would have to choose our path forward during this 4th Turning. I may have lost some nuance of the book's hypothesis, but it has been eerily prescient.
There is an inevitable tradeoff between living by the rules and just doing it.
Rules have a way of proliferating, enabling a metastasizing bureaucracy that makes action in any direction impossible. Just doing it taken to an extreme can lead to an authoritarian disaster.
At the moment, in my view, we have veered too far towards the rules. Many people feel this way, and you can see the political effects of it. Even liberal Democrats have just given their very liberal governor of Oregon the power to override our extremely bureaucratic land-use rules.
Look at World War II. Nuclear weapons were developed in the span of a few years. Trying to do it now would most likely involve 50 years of environmental review and provide a full employment program for ethicists.
It’s not one way or the other; it’s a balance — a balance that has to keep shifting to respond to new events.
I agree that we have ways many rules! However, too bad we didn’t require 50 years of environmental review and provide a full employment program for ethicists, before making nukes, both bombs and power plants.
That 80 year rhythm would be frightening, if it wasn’t so wrong, as it ignores other calamities that don’t fit, eg. the fairly significant WW1.
Malcolm said:
… too bad we didn’t require 50 years of environmental review and provide a full employment program for ethicists, before making nukes, both bombs and power plants.
With regard to the bombs, the only reason we didn’t end up fighting World War III against the Soviets in the 1950s is because both sides had nukes and were afraid that a war would result in mutual destruction. Would you prefer that alternative history to the one we are living in?
With regard to nuclear power, are you really willing to abandon the only carbon free source of power that can produce steady output when the wind stops blowing and the sun goes down?
I’m thinking,and of course it’s pure speculation at this point, that 50 years of environmental review might have convinced us slow witted humanoids not to build the damned things. They are pure MADDness!
Yes, I definitely am more concerned about nukes than global warming hysteria, even IF someone is spouting out anti renewable energy misinformation.
Needless to say, infrastructure will need upgrading, as is always an issue with major changes, but surely most people have seen through the deliberately misleading argument about renewables' inability to provide steady power on calm nights. Anyone ignorant of how this works should Google for more info. Look for renewables, battery storage, which is getting perhaps more attention than it merits, and Pumped Hydro.
I wish all the boorats at DOE were willing to look outside the box, as I have sent them info on a modified pumped hydro scheme that eliminates the need for two new reservoirs, and the need for a new turbine. The elimination of new reservoirs would also eliminate the extremely controversial, mind bogglingly time consuming reviews by this evil do gooders :)
And this isn’t si fi. There are already innumerable pumped hydro systems operating in usa and various other locations.
Of course, if one is simply anti-renewables, it’s always popular to pass on false statements I suppose. Trumpism, anyone?
BTW, last I heard, hydropower is carbon free. It’s even carbon dioxide free.
Enough battery storage to back up non-steady sources of electricity like wind and solar will require an enormous expansion of mining.
Enough pumped storage to back up non-steady sources of electricity like wind and solar will require an enormous expansion of damming and earth-moving.
A robust enough grid to support making all of our vehicles electric will require an enormous amount of both of these, combined with an enormous expansion of the grid.
Will any of this be possible given the inevitable opposition from environmentalists?
The history of the Storm King Mountain pumped storage facility in the Hudson Valley in New York State is instructive. Environmentalists killed that project.
I am not opposed to alternative ways of generating or storing energy. But from what I have seen, nuclear is our best available alternative for backing up unreliable solar and wind power.
I appreciate your informed comments, Michael.
Like I sad, battery storage is possibly getting mor interest than it deserves. Not only does it have the downsides you mentioned, but the cost of all these SHORT LIVED batteries seems unrealistic.
You’re apparently well informed about pumped hydro storage, and I do find it ironic that pro green energy folks would oppose pumped hydro (and so many other things!)
However, while understanding not wanting a bunch of new reservoirs, you aren’t familiar with, or at least not acknowledging my superior (at least in my mind) method of using water's power storage in the doorman of potential energy. Not surprising, since I haven’t shared how it would work. Be aware, though, I worked as a hydrologist for any years and have a good handle on math, physics, and other sciences, as well as having developed several residential alternative energy products.
I am almost certain my plan, with ZERO new reservoirs, would have little or no protests. Well, maybe I’m a dreamer �������������� It was a huge battle to put turbines at Applegate Dam, which was already in place. The objection? For some reason, the ropinents wanted to send the power generated through POWER LINES, which was unacceptable to a bunch of people, as the power lines would be UGLY!
Electric cars, laughable lack of 6 P's! Prior planning prevents piss poor performance. At least two states claim they’ll ban ICE sales in the near future. I wonder where the electricity will come from? If by some chance this really were to happen, I can not even imagine what will happen to the cost of electricity!!!
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