Here it is, our regular Friday diet of suggested readings for the weekend:
Two very important graphs embedded in this article on Brexit and Trumpism.
There is a line from Hayek through Thatcher and Reagan to Trump. And it’s time to change the narrative.
A semi-useful 12-step program to respond to the election of Trump.
Trump’s attacks on the media, they are only going to get worse.
No, Philosopher Richard Rorty did not prophesy the rise of Trump.
Education, not income, predicted who would vote for Trump vs Clinton.
Umberto Eco’s 14 signs of fascism.
Footnotes to Plato 
dbholmes: Blyth absolutely contradicts B. Clinton on the substance. Bill Clinton was successful because of the politics, not the substance.
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DB,
While I certainly agree with you from a personal perspective, the fact remains power comes from working with other people. This requires framing, goals, potential, momentum, focus, etc.
With businesses, it is fairly straightforward, or used to be, in that one finds a market and develops a product to fill it. Basically a company exists as an entity in a larger ecosystem/economy(capitalism). Though with the increasing financialization of the economy, society and normal economic activities have become increasingly distorted by the creation of capital as an end in itself, rather than as a tool for the functioning of society.
Governments, on the other hand, offer to provide a safe environment to otherwise live as an autonomous individual, but it gets a bit complicated on occasion. Trying to be both entity and ecosystem creates cross purposes. Sometimes what we think is equilibrium is being sustained by various external forces. Such as the extent to which debt and/or scavenging resources and assets from other parts of the world keeps our society happy. Look around you and think how much what we take for granted requires far reaching economic and cooperative behaviors, from building housing and providing food, basic utilities, etcetcetc.
Then look how your own body functions; Think of all those errant desires as individual wishes and how the will has to corral them in useful or socially acceptable fashion and how much of the desires on the peripheries of society function like those errant impulses and how the various police functions, immune, impulse control, neurological, etc. work to keep you functioning as a capable, not-schizophrenic individual.
We live best somewhere between the extremes. Not too anarchic, not too totalitarian, but with impulses pulling in both directions. So when the wind gets a little too strong in one direction, we tack and go the other way for awhile. Energy pushing out, order pushing in.
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Hi Dan, interesting… we may not be so far apart (on B Clinton) as I thought.
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Hi Brodix,
“Governments, on the other hand, offer to provide a safe environment to otherwise live as an autonomous individual…”
I think this is where your theory breaks down. To some this is true (and I wish it were). But to others the gov’t is about providing a safe environment for something else entirely. This could be for family, business, nation specific business interest, religious ideals, etc.
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HI Synred, your (much earlier) comment about Trump regarding use of nuclear weapons is not accurate. His position on use of nuclear weapons was almost if not exactly the same as Clinton’s. This was even admitted by moderators of one of the debates (who were otherwise entirely antagonistic to Trump). In that debate he made clear he was not wanting to use nuclear weapons unilaterally (first-strike). The difference between the two were on how their position was stated (tone) and not substance.
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BD,
Not going to argue with that. There are whole ranges of activity a stable society enables, including destabilizing activities. I was just referencing the basic desire for personal freedoms, as a libertarian concern. My point is particular movements, progressivism, for instance, amount to belief systems people will congregate under, but not be particularly appealing to others.
Thin line between ideology and religion.
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Hi Brodix, “Thin line between ideology and religion.”
Exactly. Hence the difference between allowing people to choose what they will, and telling others they must follow what those in charge think is best.
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DB,
The big problem is we conflate ideals with absolutes. Which is the essential fallacy of monotheism.
An absolute, as in a universal or unadulterated state, would be elemental, a raw state, while an ideal would be an epitome. So when a particular ideology assumes its particular cultural ideals are absolute, it presumes any alternative is invalid, but ultimately it is delegitimizing all distinctions and consequently everything spirals into the abyss, as all deviations from an increasingly constrained orthodoxy are deemed invalid.
Consider Athenian democracy and Roman republicanism arose in pantheistic societies, while monotheism has been used to validate monarchy and other forms of top down rule. We are trained to think the Big Guy rules.
Yet a spiritual absolute would logically be that raw essence of sentience running through all of biology. Not some ideal of knowledge and judgement from which we have fallen and to which the priesthood will guide us.
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Great readings.
What struck me about “Neoliberalism: the deep story that lies beneath Donald Trump’s triumph”
The ideology “The market would discover a natural hierarchy of winners and losers, creating a more efficient system than could ever be devised through planning or by design. Anything that impeded this process, such as significant tax, regulation, trade union activity or state provision, was counter-productive. Unrestricted entrepreneurs would create the wealth that would trickle down to everyone … In fact, liberty depends on preventing the majority from exercising choice over the direction that politics and society might take … The ultra rich are “scouts”, “experimenting with new styles of living”, who blaze the trails that the rest of society will follow … All that is good and useful, therefore, arises from inequality.”
The brick wall “If the dominant ideology stops governments from changing social outcomes, they can no longer respond to the needs of the electorate. Politics becomes irrelevant to people’s lives; debate is reduced to the jabber of a remote elite. The disenfranchised turn instead to a virulent anti-politics …”
A way out “the recognition that – as modern psychology and neuroscience make abundantly clear – human beings, by comparison with any other animals, are both remarkably social and remarkably unselfish. The atomisation and self-interested behaviour neoliberalism promotes run counter to much of what comprises human nature”
And “Steen’s Chronicle: The social contract is broken” nicely supports the idea we’ve been painting ourselves into a corner with neoliberalism. And the two graphics! simple and to the point.
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Marc,
“The ultra rich are “scouts”, “experimenting with new styles of living”, who blaze the trails that the rest of society will follow … All that is good and useful, therefore, arises from inequality.””
Consider how this assumes a fundamentally linear view of reality, where we are all progressing along this path from a primitive and unenlightened past, into the bright and shining future, guided by these leading lights of society.
As opposed to a more circular, cyclical, reciprocal view, where; “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Where thermodynamic feedback loops tie strings around everything we do and to everything else. From endless cause to endless effect.
By the linear view, Hitler would be a leading light of progress and efficiency, blazing trails for the rest of society to follow. Unmoderated linear progression leads to extremes and consequently, blowback.
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Me two….
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I liked left anarchism after read Emma Goldman and then decided it didn’t work after reading Bakunin and more or less settled on as a new deal type liberal. I’m green only in so far as I think it’s good for people, i.e., I think people are more important than trees, but people need trees (oxygen being somewhat essential and all).
And that we need to deal with Global Warming because it is a threat to our species (and incidentally others) not because of some Gaia mysticism or some other BS.
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There are pockets of rationality even in Texas. E.g., the immortal Molly Ivins forged in the sea of conservative Texas swamp.
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I imagine there are plenty of people on the right who sincerely want to help kids it bad schools. They are sincerely mistaken. However, I don’t think this is true of the funders of ‘vochers’ are sincere and Catholics have been trying to get public funding of religious education for years. However, you dress it up it’s unconstitutional. In the south many private schools are just segregated schools and should not be publicly funded either.
If you want to fix education spend more money. Inner city schools are systematically under funded though arguably with kids starting out behind they need more not less money. Even in liberal Calif.schools like Palo Alto with a student body that barely needs to be taught. are better funded than schools like East Palo Alto with a high fraction of English learners and parents who rarely read to their kids or from previous generations of failure can barely read themselves.
Pay teachers well, req. high standards, treat teaching with respect. See Finland.
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In my view reality has a liberal bias and this largely accounts for the ‘bias’ of educated people such as academics. At SLAC we don’t have a liberal philosopher. shrink or poli sci prof in sight, yet the physicist are still overwhelming liberal. This might not even be in our funding interest as some conservatives seem to still think we may find a bigger bomb — not going to happen — and liberal like to deflect funding into health and other more obviously beneficial lines of research [a].
[a] Never mind that the web was invented to facilitate the international collaboration in particle physics and, thus, we have more than ‘paid back’ every penny spent on our idle curiosity. The first website in the US was installed at SLAC by Paul Kunz — later laid off in one of our periodic budget cuts!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kunz
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Re the market and its alleged rationality. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” (tho some commenters on him will deny this) pretty clearly comes from the “wind up the universe like clockwork” Deus of Enlightenment Deism. Enough said.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis#Behavioral_psychology
Markets are not rational. Despite that Repub. Free Market Fundamentalism assumes they are.
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Synred wrote:
“In my view reality has a liberal bias and this largely accounts for the ‘bias’ of educated people such as academics.”
Oh, for God’s sake…
I’m sorry, but when you say this sort of thing, it’s impossible to take you seriously. I’m sure you’re a genius when it comes to physics, but with regard to the rest … well, let’s just say, I can think of any number of conservative intellectuals, both historical and contemporary who could run circles around you, in just about every other area.
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Synred wrote: “Markets are not rational.”
Game theory is “the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers.” It is mainly used in economics, political science, and psychology, as well as logic, computer science, biology and poker.
Oops.
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I see a lot of tail chasing here, trying to guess what lost the election to a proto-fascist television star, without much depth.
Certainly we need a political-philosophy reflection on the election, which takes into account all the social forces at work in it – but it’s too soon for that. Certainly if we had such a political philosophical analysis, we would have been better prepared for the election’s outcome, but philosophers in America have spent some sixty years denying that there was a real political philosophy to engage, preferring to live such matters to the statistics-driven ‘political science.’
But chewing one’s own tail doesn’t get us anywhere. I am here raising two questions: First, is a political philosophy possible now, and what might its analysis teach us here; and secondly what lessons can we learn in a practical way going forward to limit the worst tendencies of the new regime and ultimately win elections?
The first question certainly has a place on any philosophy blog; the second question is certainly more interesting than chasing one’s tail over how the regime got to power.
It did so because the electorate in the deciding states wanted them too. Now we must address thopse voters, just as they are, whether we like it or not. The good news is, that after the disappointments they will suffer over the next four years, they may well be ready for it.
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Meanwhile, Jimmy Dore rips Obama up one side and down the other, and rightly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=409&v=DrqAUebq6Ic
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Dan, as you know, much of Kahnemann’s fast/slow thinking applies directly to financial related decisions, and I’m sure you’ve heard of Dan Ariely’s study in behavioral economics. Markets are indeed as irrational as the rest of human behavior.
Oops back on your side of the net.
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Per my previous comment, game theory includes stochastic ideations, which arguably are forced adaptations to human irrationality. Plus, there’s the question of whether game theory is actually normative, or only prescriptive.
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Dan and synred–
I’m going to defend synred a bit in terms of convergent lines of evidence toward truth. Synred knows this well from physics. Relativity and QT–while conceptually at odds with one another–are empirically both well supported, and it seems that any future theory that includes their subject matter in some unification will have to show why they achieved the impressive results they did as approaching the truth. So that future theory will hold that while each was not the full truth, they both had some good reason to hold that they were approaching the truth.
Now, in terms of social values, I’d argue that liberal views are, in general, more likely to track truth than conservative ones (especially religious scripturally-based views). Gender equality of the usual binary type, but including those outside that? Check. Racial equality–especially the view that the concept of “race” is itself so underdetermined as to provide any real distinction among groups of people–check. Religious liberty–the real liberty of a negative right to practice what one wishes so long as it does not interfere with more fundamental human rights of all people–check. Norms of justice, equality, and rights seem to favor these as justifiable truths of a rational society, (mostly) free of the prejudices of a partisan and merely self-promoting history.
Liberalism converges to the truth at least socially because it fundamentally emphasizes “we” before “me”. Scientists get that because their endeavor is fundamentally an open social enterprise trying to get to the truth. Conservatives individually seem more likely to possess some received truth that, along with fellow believers, want to impose it on non-believers. Oh, and make lots of money for themselves in the process.
This is caricature, of course.
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Hi Alan,
I gather that USians can use “liberal” a bit differently from UKans (US: “liberal” = “left”; UK: “liberal” = USian “classical liberal”?; e.g. communism is left but not liberal), but that sentence still seems weird.
Surely the central idea of Western enlightenment liberalism is to emphasize the person and their individual liberty and “rights” above the collective desires of the “we”? Religious liberty, for example, is the promotion of individual choice above any collective decision. Islam, in contrast, holds the opposite, such that people are expected to abide by the collective consensus, with apostasy being viewed, literally, as a betrayal of the community.
Your comment also seems to suggest an alignment of reality with liberal values. As an opponent of any form of values realism, I must disagree. Values can, of course, be influenced by facts about reality. Further, one can make factual statements about which values best align with human nature, and which tend to promote happiness, but reality cannot “do” values; humans do values. So I can’t agree that values such as religious liberty “track truth”.
“Norms of justice, equality and rights” are not “truths” about reality, they are human values.
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Given Socratic’s link to a Jimmy Dore analysis, and a prior comparison between Trump and Berlusconi, here is a link to a Jimmy Dore analysis of recommendations how to handle politicians like Trump based on how people defeated Berlusconi.
Not sure why this wasn’t obvious to anyone with minimal experience in politics. Of course one should note that if liberals want to be worth anything in office (be worth replacing Trump) they are going to have to do better on policy than Obama or the Clintons.
It’s one thing to be savvy at politics to get into office. It is another to be a good representative for the people.
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Hi Alan, thankfully Coel wrote most of what I wanted to say in response.
“This is caricature, of course.”
I’m glad you added that, because I know scientists who are conservative and/or religious. I also know many scientists that have no interest in the truth (or at least substantially less unless it leads to money, position, or fame).
And most of all I’ve known wayyyyy too many liberals that have no knowledge of science, yet misquote/use it to pretend like their positions are based on some connection with an underlying “truth”, when they have no clue what they are talking about. Meanwhile they discount reasonable conservatives who don’t take such a hubristic line toward knowing any “truth”, and offer pragmatic policies (which one might disagree with but are plausible).
I do agree that successful policies will align with realities of whatever they intend to deal with. Then again one of those realities is that it must involve what people want, and that can be wildly different between individuals making the idea successful policies “tracks” better for liberals only true for liberals… and not even all of them.
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For those that are still interested in analyses of the 2016 election, I posted my take on how the Democrats fumbled things… or rather… keep fumbling things, failing to understand the nature of modern politics (to get in office) and moving liberal policies forward (while in office).
https://longtermbrainstorage.wordpress.com/2016/11/27/lessons-better-learned/
It is largely written as a response to Dan’s (engaging) essay at Agora, which argued the loss was due to a backlash by a conservative silent majority in the US heartland, and pointing to Bill Clinton as someone Democrats should emulate in some way. I reject these two ideas (very strongly), while agreeing with many of his practical recommendations.
My concept is that the Dems showed a lack of understanding of modern politics and the anti-establishment sentiment (not anti-liberal or progressive) of the US population (especially in the US heartland). This aligns with a couple of the papers above as well as links in commentary.
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Liberal and conservative are not some grand duel between sides of society. They are a basic binary, like good/bad, yes/no, left/right, on/off.
One can be quite liberal in some ways and quite conservative in others. For instance, some scientists might be socially and politically liberal, but can be quite conservative in how they might approach questions of logic. Some might even be absolutists in their views of science over everything else.
There are forms of religion which are quite conservative and others which can be quite liberal. Those who disapprove tend to focus on content of the writings, rather than the context of the social purposes. That some writings trace their sources back thousands of years is more important than general logic. Logic is useful, but often tends to be ignored, even by those who think of themselves as logical. Especially when paychecks and social relations are involved.
Given today’s economics, for example, we seem unable to tell the difference between irrational and deep denial. Such as going 20 trillion dollars in public debt and not taking into account how this has completely washed out normal market forces. Markets are an economic ecosystem and as such, they are not linear, but scalar. They ebb and flow and when you wash those basic cycles out with an enormous amount of debt, it amounts to a tidal wave. The logic is very much there and it will come around and hit us in the back of the head, no matter how much we hold our hands over our ears and go nananana.
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Synred: “I’m green only in so far as I think it’s good for people, i.e., I think people are more important than trees, but people need trees (oxygen being somewhat essential and all).
And that we need to deal with Global Warming because it is a threat to our species (and incidentally others) not because of some Gaia mysticism or some other BS.”
The suggestion that there may be a real dichotomy between humans and trees exhibits the basic humanistic fallacy, that the universe is all about us. Human culture makes a very convincing case for its being the ultimate reality, but it’s a phenomenon of the last 10,000 years or so, out of billions. We need the earth, but the earth doesn’t need us. This isn’t Gaia mysticism, it’s fact. Of course, we’re going to make every effort to ensure our own survival, but in focusing on that we need to be aware of the background to our efforts, to prevent our inflated egos from continuing to justify endless wars and atrocities.
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