A Double-dose of Thymos!

by John Holbo on September 16, 2016

Welp, I guess The Claremont Review is bidding fair to be the intellectual organ – gland, call it what you will – of Trumpism:

The Flight 93 guy is back, and scolding critics for their lack of appreciation of ancient Greek rhetoric techniques. How ungracious to have missed that!

And there’s this:

Trump is a very American character, a very New York character, the businessman who understands the world: the sophos who could bring efficiency, toughness (his favorite quality), and common sense to politics, if only he were listened to.

Yeah, now that you mention it, he does kind of look like one! “These philosoph shoes, are longing to stray! … If I can think it there, I’ll think it anywhere!” But there is a threat!

Every republic eventually faces what might be called the Weimar problem. Has the national culture, popular and elite, deteriorated so much that the virtues necessary to sustain republican government are no longer viable?

Yeah, come to think of it, I liked it better under the Kaiser. After they moved it to Weimar? I dunno … it was like everyone just forgot what had made the Republic great. All those ancient, civic virtues Tocqueville had praised in Democracy in Prussia were just swirling the drain. Bismarck must have been spinning in his grave to see such a sad remnant of once vibrant Republicanism. And today we are seeing something like that again. It’s like people just don’t study history anymore.

As a sophos might say: sad.

{ 44 comments }

1

Layman 09.16.16 at 3:25 pm

All that, plus he thinks that it was Libya, not Iraq, that was the greatest foreign-policy blunder of our time.

2

ZM 09.16.16 at 4:00 pm

At least in Weimar times the art wasn’t connected to Neo-Nazi’s ;-)

3

ZM 09.16.16 at 4:01 pm

or actually maybe its the other way around, if the USA’s Weimar period is full of art connected to Neo-Nazi’s, then they shouldn’t get a totalitarian period next

4

Chip Daniels 09.16.16 at 4:15 pm

Both articles have this weird, deep satire vibe to them.

The way he strains to affect this intensely thoughtful, erudite, intellectual pose even though he’s talking about a carnival ring man.

All he’s really lacking is the assertion that, say what you will about the tenets of Trumpism, but at least its an ethos.

5

burritoboy 09.16.16 at 4:30 pm

I had a couple of classes with Chuck Kesler. Perhaps now I recognize some of the problems his class on Cicero had. This is probably too obscure, but what I would say is high among Cicero’s errors is a too glib rejection of communism (i.e. of Plato’s communism in the Republic). Cicero did not want to recognize that, while focusing on the Roman tradition was often helpful, that the philosopher stands utterly beyond any traditions. Many traditions can be useful, but they don’t ultimately bind either theorists or even the populance or the statesmen.

I am tempted to identify Kesler’s conservatism with Cicero’s failed conservatism. As the Roman Republic degrades, Cicero himself hastens it’s end by his own political radicalism and dictatorial acts. In the Republic’s final act, the conservatives (including Cicero) decided to put everything into Pompey’s hands. Pompey, for those not familiar with the history, was grotesquely not the right man for this. I wonder if American conservatives haven’t fallen into the same errors?

6

burritoboy 09.16.16 at 4:33 pm

Also, completely bizarre use of sophos. Unless it’s being used in a highly satirical sense.

7

Raven Onthill 09.16.16 at 5:52 pm

In New York, they think he’s a dishonest clown, and construction contractors absolutely loathe him. People I am one handshake away from were put out of business by his habit of refusing to pay.

I suppose this is not satire, alas.

8

Greg Hays 09.16.16 at 6:06 pm

Trump is an alazon, not a sophos.

9

politicalfootball 09.16.16 at 6:13 pm

Every republic eventually faces what might be called the Weimar problem. Has the national culture, popular and elite, deteriorated so much that the virtues necessary to sustain republican government are no longer viable? America is not there yet, though when 40% of children are born out of wedlock it is not too early to wonder. What about when Donald Trump is the Republican nominee for president? Many conservatives think that’s also sufficient reason to worry the end is near.

I understand the question, but the surer sign of comprehensive decline is not Trump’s success but the conservative candidates’ failure, one by one, all 16 of them.

If we are not in Weimar, Kesler says, we are close to it. But Kesler isn’t looking backward to the Kaiser. He’s looking forward … to Trump.

10

LFC 09.16.16 at 6:41 pm

From the “Restatement on Flight 93” article:

One of the dumber things often said about Trump is that “you can’t trust him with the nuclear codes.” This statement, first, betrays a complete lack of understanding of nuclear command and control. More important, it’s an extraordinary calumny, one that accuses the man of a wish or propensity to commit mass murder on the scale of Pol Pot.

But the author never specifies what the alleged “complete lack of understanding of nuclear command and control” is: where is the error?

Then he bangs on about how the US is ruled by a “transnational managerial class in conjunction with the administrative state.” Trump will supposedly roll back “the
administrative state.” But there’s no real argument made for that (I mean the second proposition — not much of an argument for the first either), not at least that I could see (admittedly I skipped a sentence here and there). Populist instincts and invocations of popular sovereignty don’t nec. translate into policy change.

To “undo” the administrative state one has to be willing to fight in the trenches of its ostensible pillars (to mix metaphors) — i.e., the courts, the agencies, the bureaucracy — and while some conservatives do that, people who write articles for Claremont Rev of Bks containing Straussian buzzwords while simultaneously extolling populism tend not to be among them, I think.

11

Barry 09.16.16 at 6:51 pm

burritoboy 09.16.16 at 4:30 pm
“I had a couple of classes with Chuck Kesler. Perhaps now I recognize some of the problems his class on Cicero had. ”

Considering that he starts with a litany of falsehoods and works down from there, I’d say that the problems his class on Cicero had was that the teacher was a 100% liar.

12

bjk 09.16.16 at 6:53 pm

It’s not Kesler it’s Michael Anton, a student of Harry Jaffa. Apparently he’s a snazzy dresser and there’s a video on youtube about some of his favorite haberdashers.

13

bjk 09.16.16 at 6:55 pm

Holbo will like this:

“You can call me Mike Anton. My pen name, Nicholas Antongiavanni, is not meant to obscure my real identity. It is kind of a two-pronged joke. One is to make the name sound more like Niccolò Machiavelli, who is the inspiration for the book and who gives the architecture for the book and for all kinds of literary devices. Second, it is meant to conjure this imagined figure of authority on men’s fashion. I pictured Nicholas Antongiavanni as a very dashing boulevardier who you might think was qualified to give you clothing advice.”

14

Zamfir 09.16.16 at 7:11 pm

@LFC, that’s a nice combination there. We can trust Trump with the nukes because there is a command and control structure in place. Also, vote for Trump because he is good at dismantling such structures.

15

LFC 09.16.16 at 7:47 pm

@Zamfir
Good point. I didn’t really notice that (implicit) contradiction in the piece.

16

LFC 09.16.16 at 7:51 pm

bjk @12
It’s not Kesler it’s Michael Anton, a student of Harry Jaffa

There are two separate articles linked by Holbo in the OP. One is signed by Kesler (who was a student of H. Mansfield), and I think it’s safe to assume that the article signed by Kesler was written by him.

17

medrawt 09.16.16 at 7:59 pm

Also there isn’t such a command and control structure, from the reporting that I’ve read. The purpose of the “nuclear” football was to make sure that the Soviets knew we could launch a devastating strike in the time between our detection of their launch and the arrival of their missiles, meaning that POTUS had to have a mechanism for giving the emergency order at any time, from any place, without going through layers of protocol. So the President gets a secure line with missile command, authorizes his identity, and gives the order. The only control over POTUS’ orders would be if the person actually responsible for carrying out the launch refused to obey. (Which is why, as has been reported many places, when Nixon’s paranoia and alcohol abuse began escalating in the period leading to his resignation, his senior staff also started becoming paranoid about what they could do to prevent him launching a nuclear strike.) So I don’t know what the author thinks he’s talking about.

18

BruceJ 09.16.16 at 8:33 pm

Not one single US bank will deal with Trump because he’s a serial deadbeat with a long history of screwing over his creditors and investors.

Yep thats JUST the kind of hard-headed, practical business man we need running things!

19

Barry 09.16.16 at 10:19 pm

bjk 09.16.16 at 6:53 pm
“It’s not Kesler it’s Michael Anton, a student of Harry Jaffa. Apparently he’s a snazzy dresser and there’s a video on youtube about some of his favorite haberdashers.”

Sorry.

20

Ben Alpers 09.16.16 at 11:06 pm

Barry @11:

If Kesler is a liar, I’m sure he thinks he’s a “noble” liar. ;)

21

PatinIowa 09.16.16 at 11:23 pm

So there’s this: “The country will go on, but it will not be a constitutional republic. It will be a blue state on a national scale.”

In other words, as I understand it, the population will be healthier, better educated and more affluent.

Damn. With that looming on the horizon, it truly is time for violent resistance.

Conservatives saying they don’t like oligarchy are pretty much always risible.

22

Barry 09.16.16 at 11:25 pm

The joke is that to the extent that we are in a near-Wiemar moment, it’s overwhelmingly due to the fact that the right-wing elites deeply want to destroy the republic, and they have a massive following.

This guy is really just a jumped up intellectual justifier of right-wing sh*, like so many German college professors back in the day.

23

Lee A. Arnold 09.16.16 at 11:42 pm

Trump says one thing, then he says the opposite, he denies the facts, he lies — and it doesn’t matter. His supporters do not care what he says. They are supporting him because he’s their guy, and they hate Hillary. It’s the in-group phenomenon of “motivated social cognition”, the modern tribalism in which facts are secondary, dismissible. It was always active in politics on both sides of course, but the GOP has been basing their message on an increasing number of lies for a few decades now, and Trump has laid it open, and they don’t even care.

If Trump is elected, it will be very bad for the country because he is teaching kids that it is all right to lie.

24

Barry 09.16.16 at 11:59 pm

I went back and skimmed his ‘reply’. I noticed that he seems to feel that Flight 93 is a good analogy, aside from the fact that the passengers basically chose their death.

I’ve ceased to wonder at these people; I now feel that they sincerely wish for the destruction of the USA. If they and theirs can’t run it, then they want to destroy it.

I’ve also ceased to believe that these people would learn from a Trump disaster, because they didn’t learn from the Dubya Debacle (which is one of the reasons that I believe that they’d rejoice in the destruction of the USA).

25

None 09.17.16 at 12:34 am

“Trump is a very American character, a very New York character, the businessman who understands the world: the sophos who could bring efficiency, toughness” etc

Trump might want to bring these qualities to his own businesses first – he might be able to avoid yet another bankruptcy & yet more expensive capital from russian oligarchs.

Do these idiot Trump fanboys know anything at all about businessman other than what they see in hollywood movies ?

26

kidneystones 09.17.16 at 12:51 am

Hi John, thanks for the link to the Kesler critique of Trump from the right: “Donald Trump and the Conservative Cause.”

Kesler undoes himself, however, repeatedly. This howler stands out: “The worst thing about the Trump phenomenon is that he does not spend his days and nights conscientiously preparing for a job for which everyone—everyone—agrees he is conspicuously unready. ”

If Kesler were correct, he’d be writing an identically suspect piece about the ideological defects of Cruz, Rubio, or Bush. He makes some sharp observations here and there and, of course, is doing what he’s supposed to do: build and protect brand.

Facts don’t matter much whenever this is the case.

27

LFC 09.17.16 at 2:16 am

k’stones
Hi John, thanks for the link to the Kesler critique of Trump from the right

All one need do is read the last three paragraphs of the Kesler piece, with its quotes from the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, to realize that this is a sympathetic critique. The message of Kesler’s conclusion is that Trump’s basic instincts are quite good but he pays insufficient attention to the founding documents of the republic etc etc. (If this is a critique, it’d be interesting to see what an endorsement would look like.) Of course, there’s more than one way to read the Declaration — see the CT forum on Danielle Allen’s bk. — and not all of them wd find favor w the Claremont RevBks people.

28

Raven Onthill 09.17.16 at 2:35 am

Barry@24: “I’ve ceased to wonder at these people; I now feel that they sincerely wish for the destruction of the USA. If they and theirs can’t run it, then they want to destroy it.”

Yes, they have fallen in love with death and destruction.

29

LFC 09.17.16 at 3:01 am

Barry@24: “I’ve ceased to wonder at these people; I now feel that they sincerely wish for the destruction of the USA. If they and theirs can’t run it, then they want to destroy it.”

I think this goes overboard. What these people want is another Reagan. The candidates who copied Reagan’s rhetoric most closely were the ones who lost. When it came down to Cruz and Trump, these folks were for Cruz. Trump is the one left standing, so they’re putting the best face on it.

Even if they want to “destroy” the country, some Straussian political theorists in California, i.e. the subjects of Holbo’s OP, aren’t going to be able to.

30

Anononymous 09.17.16 at 3:03 am

Fallen in love with death and destruction? Jesus H Christ, we are jumping the shark on hyperbole here. Trump is an unserious jackass who will lose the election. His alt-right (note I limited this to alt right) supporters are just angry sexless men who live in their mom’s basement. Let’s give this “movement” the respect it deserves, aka none. These people have neither money, social capital, a career, a willing sex partner, nor a future. Let them rage on the Internet, it’s all typo ridden sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Since they damn sure will not be having kids I give this “movement” about 15 minutes of internet fame until we never hear about it again.

As to white people coalescing around one party, this was always inevitable. As that old founder of modern Singapore said: when you have a multiracial/religious democracy, people’s interests and thus votes are narrowed down to sectoral ones. All other interests are reduced to zero. “Hey, she/he may be a corrupt idiot, but he’s Our corrupt idiot.” Also see Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, South Africa, Zimbabwe….

What follows is that if the government’s purpose is to define, protect and distribute rents then this whole thing really is a zero sum game. And Lee Kuan Yew, as always, was right all along.

31

maidhc 09.17.16 at 4:58 am

What BruceJ says at #18 is correct. Trump does most of his banking with Deutsche Bank.

Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) said it would fight a $14 billion demand from the U.S. Department of Justice to settle claims it missold mortgage-backed securities, a shock bill that raises questions about the future of Germany’s largest lender.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-deutsche-bank-mortgages-idUSKCN11L2VQ

32

Lee A. Arnold 09.17.16 at 10:20 am

Maidhc, that’s a damning story, with a damning possible conclusion if the Trumpenstein monster is elected.

33

John M. Burt 09.17.16 at 8:03 pm

Chip Daniels (#4), speaking as a former carnival ring man (Inland Empire Shows, Summer 1982, for three or four stops), I am appalled to be associated with Mister Trump.

34

Rich Puchalsky 09.17.16 at 8:18 pm

The President-with-nuclear-football thing has been such a recurring concern that there’s a song about it. From the Dead Kennedies” _Gone With My Wind_ (released 1986):

“Wake up! Get down here quick!
The president’s had too much to drink
His days of power are about gone
He’s been talking to paintings in the hall

He says, “I’m finished, so what the hell?
My life is ruined, what matters now?
I’ve always itched for that last great thrill:
If I die all of you should too.””

[…]

“Let go of me. Do you think I’m mad? To tell the truth, sir, I’d rather not say
Just keep your paws inside your pockets
And planet earth will be OK.

But you reached for the button anyhow
I had no choice but to knock you out
That’s just last night’s bump on your head
On to the next crisis, it’s another day.”

35

MFB 09.18.16 at 6:19 am

I don’t think that it’s very surprising that a right-wing journalist in a right-wing magazine is trying to establish grounds for supporting the (nominally) right-wing candidate in a national election. Nor is it very surprising that such a journalist expresses ideas which are often dubious or even downright wrong — dishonesty in the service of power is the staple of right-wing journalism.

I confess that I felt sick after reading the “Flight 93” piece, not because of the metaphor, but because of the deep-seated ugliness of the author’s agenda. However, this ugliness is simply Republicanism, and it is merely an extrapolation of the Democratic Party’s current agenda (which is, basically, extreme Reaganism with a touch of corporate power and without any ideology to sustain it). So, one should be afraid that what seems now to be gibberish will, in twenty years, be the staple of Washington Post editorials.

Meanwhile, as far as I can make out, the article displays an understanding of what is going on in the Trump phenomenon which nobody on the Democratic side is capable of grasping, probably because all comprehension of the Trump phenomenon must be subsumed to the urgent need of electing the Democratic Party’s horrible candidate. (Incidentally, the basic argument of the “Flight 93” article — that a Hillary election would be disastrous because she will put us all in camps supervised by death panels and destroy the economy while murmuring spells over her strap-on — is very much the basic Democratic argument against electing Trump, reflected in a mildly distorting mirror.)

36

Lee A. Arnold 09.18.16 at 10:42 am

That gibberish has been the staple of Washington Post editorials for two decades, already! They are Fox News Lite.

It’s only in this election season that the WaPo eds have started to freak-out at what is being wrought — but without admitting (or perhaps even realizing) that they themselves helped to wright it.

37

alfredlordbleep 09.18.16 at 1:26 pm

@33

Après moi le déluge

38

Barry 09.18.16 at 5:02 pm

LFC 09.17.16 at 3:01 am
Barry@24: “I’ve ceased to wonder at these people; I now feel that they sincerely wish for the destruction of the USA. If they and theirs can’t run it, then they want to destroy it.”

LFC: “I think this goes overboard. What these people want is another Reagan. The candidates who copied Reagan’s rhetoric most closely were the ones who lost. When it came down to Cruz and Trump, these folks were for Cruz. Trump is the one left standing, so they’re putting the best face on it.”

Where the ‘best face’ is a 100% fraudulent justification for doing whatever the right wants.

39

John M. Burt 09.19.16 at 7:06 am

Well, if he wants to fly the Republican party into the ground, hey, go for it.

40

burritoboy 09.19.16 at 6:56 pm

“Of course, there’s more than one way to read the Declaration — see the CT forum on Danielle Allen’s bk. — and not all of them wd find favor w the Claremont RevBks people.”

Danielle Allen’s book got a fairly positive review from the Claremont Review.

41

LFC 09.19.16 at 8:37 pm

Danielle Allen’s book got a fairly positive review from the Claremont Review

Interesting. I guess I’ll look up the review at some point.

42

LFC 09.19.16 at 8:43 pm

‘anononymous’ @30
how the f*ck can you generalize in that way about where people in the ‘alt-right’ live, their sex lives etc.?

Anyway, Claremont Rev of Bks is not the alt-right. This is a dumb comment.

43

anon/portly 09.20.16 at 5:38 pm

I thought the most interesting thing about the original article was that he never explained the Flight 93 thing, i.e. why the plane of America will crash if we don’t do something right now . Why mightn’t the crash come in 10 years? Or 20 years? Or maybe it’s crashed already, maybe it’s already too late!

I had thought the “crashing” thing had something to do with the routine litany of conservative complaints that he goes through – everything going to hell in a handbasket – but it turns out not to be so. In the new piece, in answering various criticisms that apparently do not include “I left my central thesis as an exercise for the reader,” the explanation turns out to be electoral:

If Hillary wins, there will still be a country, in the sense of a geographic territory with a people, a government, and various institutions. Things will mostly look the same, just as—outwardly—Rome changed little on the ascension of Augustus. It will not be tyranny or Caesarism—not yet. But it will represent, in my view, an irreversible triumph for the administrative state. Consider that no president has been denied reelection since 1992. If we can’t beat the Democrats now, what makes anyone think we could in 2020, when they will have all the advantages of incumbency plus four more years of demographic change in their favor? And if we can’t win in 2016 or 2020, what reason is there to hope for 2024? Will the electorate be more Republican? More conservative? Will constitutional norms be stronger?

The country will go on, but it will not be a constitutional republic. It will be a blue state on a national scale. Only one party will really matter. A Republican may win now and again—once in a generation, perhaps—but only a neutered one who has “updated” all his positions so as to be more in tune with the new electorate. I.e., who has done exactly what the Left has for years been concern-trolling us to do: move left and become more like them. Yet another irony: the “conservatives” who object to Trump as too liberal are working to guarantee that only a Republican far more liberal than Trump could ever win the presidency again.

Still and all, for many—potentially me included—life under perma-liberalism will be nice.

What I think this guy should have done was write a companion piece from the progressive point of view, with a different routine litany of ills of course, where the “Flight 93 Election” was not electing Trump, it was electing Bernie.

You know, if progressives couldn’t beat Hillary, this was their last chance, now they face life under perma-neoliberalism!

44

dax 09.23.16 at 11:16 am

This is a while, but Manta at 155 says:

“The socialists in power and Sarkozy have the same racist policies as Le Pen against Muslims: but only Le Pen is also against EU, so only she gets labeled as racist and xenophobes by the powers-that-be”

This is wrong. Marine Le Pen gets labeled as racist and a xenophobe because of the history of the party she leads, the National Front. This was founded by her father, who was a virulent racist and anti-semite, and the stink lingers despite Marine’s attempts to clean it up (meaning her xenophobia – and I’m using it in a descriptive sense, with no pejorative intent – is no more pronounced than Sarkozy’s). It has nothing to do with Le Pen being against the EU – this is all in Manta’s imagination. Indeed the biggest reason why Le Pen will lose the Presidential election is that she is against the EU and the euro, and the majority of French want none of it (if they can have the xenophobia without the Frexit, so much the better).

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