Glenn, I have a great deal of respect for you. I have appreciated the conversations you and Dr. McWhorter have engaged in with honesty and courage.
I am looking at your mea culpa here after Trump has won the 2024 race. I wonder if your thoughts have changed any. It has been a few months since your videos have appeared as regularly as they once did in my YouTube feeds.
As Trump begins to end wars, improve the economy, expose the corruption in the Deep State, have RFK, Jr. expose the corruption in Big Pharma, the FDA, and to move toward a healthier American future in all of these ways, I feel you will come to some measured conclusion that will sound something like, “Pugnacious, sophomoric jerks might, however unexpectedly, make the best leaders in a culture like ours.”
Character is destiny in so many ways. I did not vote for Trump. I don't think he held up any values apart from his love of himself and of power. He worked very, very hard but that in itself is nothing to admire if the ultimate goal is to have a gangster's grip on America. He's been called great many things but to me both those praising him and those calling him names missed the only relevant reality: that he never cared about anything or anyone except for himself. That was obvious to me. Fran Liebowitz, one of my heroines, isolated the basics: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fran+liebowitz+on+donald+trump+&t=newext&atb=v225-1&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DYMqeQiXtK8U
"It's not seditious to wonder whether or not irregularities ought to be investigated in an electoral process. There are irregularities all the time in elections."
I agree but it might be if investigations by honest people had been conducted and everyone and their dog agrees there were no substantial irregularities and YOU KNOW IT but you sow doubt in the electoral process in bad faith, not even believing what you are saying.
Trump should have been impeached and removed from office when he said there were millions of illegal votes cast in the 2016 election without any evidence. It was investigated and found to be false. A President who lies about matters so fundamental to democracy should not hold office. The truth should matter. If there were any real facts supporting the idea that there was widespread corruption in the way the vote was conducted then all these extremely talented people on the case would have had some success with the courts over the last two months.
As for deplatforming. Do private companies not have the right to establish rules for their platform? It is hilarious to watch people like Devin Nunes complaining on the most successful and popular cable news outlet that he is being silenced. If only that were possible.
If we want character to matter then we need to impeach and remove from office all those who lie in bad faith.
You can be ideologically pure or effective, you can’t be both. Unfortunately, most are choosing the former.
Trump’s intelligence – To call a person who, by all accounts is a political outsider, capable of manipulating the system to rise to what many consider the most powerful political position in the world stupid was the democrats first mistake. Trump is smart. Maybe not in the traditional academic sense, but smart as a fox.
Trump’s danger - If you believe that the rise of Trump to power was a symptom of underlying political unrest and not the cause, than the extent of Trump’s danger to democracy is currently unknown. A more violent, extremest leader could rise through the ranks, making Trump look civil in comparison.
Election Integrity - The vast majority of experts rate our election system as dysfunctional compared to many European systems.
Danger – We are reproducing similar conditions for white males that existed prior to WWII. Our political figures, our elite, our intelligentsia are unable to see the damage being caused to the social experiment that is America by the prevalent theories of social discourse, interactions and narrative.
Cliff, Mark; it seems to a large degree we agree about many of the systematic issues that gave rise to Trump, that have generally been neglected, dismissed, or covered-up by the political establishment and media (I would argue on both "sides"); maybe where we disagree is just about how much Trump himself is/was a problem in his own right, even if he's just an effect, not a cause of the bigger issues at play; I certainly do not disagree that his "badness" or "stupidity" has been overplayed relative to the important factors that our country and world are facing.
MT, specifically with regard to your (2), I think I pretty much said the same. I who am really skeptical about most of the outrageous claims about election fraud, from the beginning had wished for a thorough live, 24-hour streamed election fraud investigation. I would have paid to watch this; I would have paid to have the most radical conspiratorial people make their claims live on television and have them thoughtfully disproven; or hell, maybe shown to be true. I would have been happier to find out some truly malicious things took place in either direction for the good of the integrity of our system, however as I mentioned before those who stormed the Capitol would likely not believe anything they saw or heard if it didn't reinforce their pre-established beliefs.
And about (i) I don't see any reason to impeach, neither legal nor practical. I think the longer-term, overall problems created by further alienating many millions of people is worse than the potential of risk of him running and winning again or the benefits gained from "rebuking" him in some official way. The real hope is that all of this leads to both parties (and hopefully some 3rd parties) learn from the last four years and start to attend to the real issues we are all concerned about and not make Trump straw-man.
I believe John McWhorter’s assessment of Trump’s character as a “truly narcissistic, empty, heartless being,” is correct, which is why I never voted for Trump. Full disclosure, I felt the same about Hillary Clinton and as such refused to vote for President in 2016 (I voted in local elections). As someone not registered as a Republican or Democrat in a state that does not allow me to vote in the primaries (NY), I stood at the voting booth asking myself “is this really the best America has to offer”? Conversely, this begs the question “can a person of integrity, humility, and grace survive the political meat grinder to rise to the presidency”? What role do single issue voters have on the calculus that is the American politic? What role does the echo chamber created by computational algorithms lead to confirmational bias and further the political divide? Finally, and most importantly, what will it take to break through these log jams to make America the better place it can be?
I have read the extract several times and it becomes more difficult at each reading (which probably says something about me rather than the Professors – my excuses – I’m in the U.K. so it’s not my business, and I don’t have a political ‘home’ in the U.K. and I doubt I would have one in the U.S.A.). For what it is worth, from my uninformed perspective across the pond, the two arguments I cannot understand from Professor Loury are:
(1) The argument to take away the right to contract, and get people to agree with you.
In disavowing President Trump at this moment, Professor Loury, even though he recognises the situation, appears to support one set of people casually removing the right to contract from another group who hold different beliefs. Taking a position that in anyway associates with the removal of the right to contract (no employment, no banking, no communication platforms, no professional body membership etc. ) from roughly half a country appears extremely dangerous. The list of witches will be as long as one group can get away with, or as long as needed to suppress a belief/group. The position is made worse, rather than better, by the statement,
“You don't kill Trumpism until you talk to the 70 million people who voted for him and get at least 15 or 20 million of them to agree with you. That's the task at hand.”
I’ll repeat, “get them to agree with you”, what does that mean? Surely the aim would be to hear and understand these people’s concerns, so that they are acknowledged effectively in policy?
(2) Applying the ‘character argument’ to President Trump alone.
If a character argument can be made then it should be applied to all Members of Congress of both parties, and presumably also to State Legislatures. It seems peculiar to focus only on President Trump. Professor Loury seems to recognise the ‘fine people hoax’ constructed after Charlottesville, is a hoax, nonetheless, the President Elect has used the hoax, both before the election and afterwards. What kind of character is the President Elect to use a hoax about one of the most sensitive and divisive issues in the U.S.A?
Professor Loury wonders, “Perhaps there should have been a commission to investigate”, specifically within the context of mail-in ballots, but does not use this to question the character of all Members of Congress, and the President Elect. What character must these people have if they did not immediately agree to both a forensic audit and a wide ranging commission on democratic transparency? Without this surely they are all responsible for inciting what happened, surely they are all responsible for not delivering confidence in a fair and transparent election, surely they are all of the wrong character to be in elected office?
Before I use a short list, I should state that there have been caes of problems in U.K. elections, there are also ongoing arguments about I.D. and mail in ballots, local and Mayoral elections were even delayed from last year to this year (due to Covid), so when I imagine the following list, it is definitely not from a position of presumed superiority.
An imagined list of potential concerns might be:
(i) free and fair election (e.g. media and the hoaxes, a politically motivated first impeachment, the taking down of funding sites, freezing the NYP on Twitter, billionaire funding of the electoral system, threat of violence/cancelling/doxing …),
(ii) unconstitutionally made changes to the electoral process in some states (so signalling against the Constitution, so accepting otherwise illegal ballots, so increasing the opportunity for fraud …),
(iii) the lists of alleged fraudulent registration provided by the, so called, Voter Integrity Project,
(iv) the apparently low signature rejection rates,
(v) the lack of meaningful observation,
(vi) technology concerns (non-open source software, non-separation of responsibilities, other connected and storage devices in counting rooms, custody chains, adjudication, young privilege due to voting machine complexity …),
(vii) delay of DNI report to Congress on potential foreign interference
etc …
I do not know what the actual list of concerns is, but if there were concerns shared by millions then politicians of good character would have sought to address these concerns, if they have not then they are all not of good character and not fit for office.
Well that was quite a bit of typing given that I am not American and it is not my business, probably a side-effect of lockdown, but I’ll call it an outside perspective. As an aside, I will say that Professor McWhorter’s comment, “ we're talking about the idea that an actual functioning human being can walk around believing in Q”, made me chuckle. I wonder whether professors can walk around believing that elections are free, fair and transparent. I recall a slightly related comment from Professor Heather McDonald to Professor Loury (Manhattan Institute October 2020), “I don't believe in conspiracy theories, but I'm moving to the point now where I do think it is conceivable that China is the funder of our diversity ideology”, so perhaps some professors do worry.
I agree with your sentiments but I don't believe your first point can be couched in the "right to contract"–which we lost in the new deal anyway. While this deplatforming concerns me as a radical departure from the status quo, and I think it violates Burkian societal norms, circumstances are actually fundamentally opposite of the term of art you invoke.
The "right to contract" includes the right of Amazon to kick anybody it wants off its cloud; and Twitter as the party to the contract to eliminate twits on its terms; ditto Facebook, Youtube etc.
And the arguments against this deplatforming are just the arguments raised in defense of government intervention in labor and consumer markets which ended the right to contract. One party to the contract has more power than the other, so the government has to set the rules to protect the powerless.
There was always a more libertarian current on the internet. Maybe it is a place where the right to contract still exists, just as exemplified by the various bile attendant to the wild, wild, west of discourse as by the actions of the FANG entities this past week. We could as readily condemn the brilliant hands off strategy on the internet as having lead to the violence at the Capitol as to choose Trump.
In the end we can only hope that Facebook goes the way of Myspace in the wake of such craven insinuation with the woke mob and against the deplorable one. Some platform will get this and figure out how to be a place for those disenfranchised by the leftward cant of social media giants without being just a cesspool for their waste. I have little doubt of it as social media, in it's less censorious recent past, was where the right flourished. It is a far more critical tool for the right whose arguments are indiscriminately ruled outside polite conversation in the mainstream media, but we should get over the idea that culturally sensitive corporations are the gatekeepers to other than their own estates.
I find your points with merit, but would add 3 things.
1. You dichotomize (black/white) your character argument. Suggesting people/politicians are all good or bad, fit or unfit for office, while I think it is obvious morality, character, and fitness are all qualities on a spectrum. Is it irrational to argue that Trump (or anyone else) might be of particularly poor character and particularly dangerous for office? I don't think so, but you will be tasked with making this point with solid evidence.
2. The election issue is principally about Trump and his elk "feeling" that the election was stolen, and his inability to accept the reality in which he might have lost; and I believe his character defect (certainly combined with our political climate, media propaganda/corporatism, and social media/internet) shows here; he would rather fuel the fire that sews major discord in the country than accept defeat. We could make the same investigations into previous elections throughout history if one of the parties "felt" they must be wrong, but generally they accepted the elections as having been legitimate.
Lastly, all the investigations and evidence disproving fraud in the world about this election would not plant a seed of doubt into the "Q" believers that you blasely compare to a professor believing in free, fair, and transparent elections, as if those two beliefs are even remotely equivalent. Again, there is a spectrum of belief and disbelief. One can believe that even flawed elections are on the whole legitimate and "Fair" and be considered of sound mind. Can you say the same about the Q-believer? This is not to dismiss the very real conspiracies that do exist in many elements of life that ought to be addressed and whatever works needs to be done to restore trust in our political system, which goes far beyond Trump and before him. However, like John pointed out, just like with religion, just like with the woke-left, the Q-folks are impervious to reason or evidence. Any disproving of their belief system with sound argument or proof can simply be dismissed by saying "that's just another level of deep-state" at work, so I have doubts about how they can be reached and if they deserve the same categorization as your professor walking around thinking elections are on the whole legitimate.
1) I agree I do dichotomise the character argument, but if it is to (can) be applied it should be applied to all. You may well be right in implying that it is not irrational to argue that an individual could be of danger to office, but this possibility may be inevitable if one wants an executive that is able to act. Nonetheless, I tried to argue that disavowing President Trump now has large costs / dangers. Perhaps two follow on points are
(i) is Section 4 of the 25th Amendment adequate, and sufficiently robust against purely political use (I guess that apart form the Q folks, many will think V.P. Pence was capable of making the decision) and, I think more importantly,
(ii) what is the context that creates and allows candidates to make competent runs for office even though others believe they are particularly dangerous? At the moment I am thinking of the bloggingheads discussion Prof Loury had with Prof Daniel Markovits, on the latter’s book, ‘The Meritoracy Trap’. If a system continues to grow the separation of an elite from, say, a non-college class, then such ‘populist’ candidates will arise, whether Sanders or Trump. Simply the production of candidates may not actually be sufficient though, one thinks back to 1970 and the concerns raised by Ivan Illich on “the institutionalization of values”. Anyway, I am drifting way out of my depth, so will stop this line of thought.
2) Even if the election issue is principally President Trump’s elk “feeling” this is does not mean the response should be directly targeted at the President. (i) It is possible for experienced people to have good (or bad) intuition from fuzzy data and (ii) perhaps systems should not allow wrong intuitions to gain traction, but rather than do this by censoring discussion it ought to be possible to demonstrate the intuitions are wrong – free, fair and transparent might be preferable to commission and audit, but something ‘feels’ needed. And I would agree, all elections, not just this one (nor just the U.S.A, but it is a model for the rest).
In terms of your final paragraph, I am in a little more disagreement. I agree that equating Q-stuff and belief in free, fair, transparent elections is not valid. Nonetheless, I think the point stands, because of their relative importance one should attach similar priors to them - though not resources.
You assumed good faith, if not exactly in Trump, in the voters. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I think it’s right to demand robust evidence of malfeasance, and not to be cynical. The problem we have we have is not just a rise in bad faith but a really unhinged sense among major sections of society that they *just know* the truth. It’s a strange subjectivism where people think they have a special insight into reality that means they see things that the rest of us poor schmucks don’t. This moral certitude is dangerous whether it’s from die-hard Trump people or the woke left and their enablers.
The thing is, the media genuinely don’t see what they are doing as lying. The are practicing the journalism of attachment in which you tell the Greater Truth. It’s a real problem. The problem with assuming they are lying is that it’s easy to miss the kernel of truth in what’s being written and form an opposing impression that is equally skewed.
When Don Lemon likens Trump supporters to Klan members, where should I pick for the kernel? I have nothing but fury for the drone who calls me or my kind racist. I have lived too long with decency in my heart about the issue to tolerate the judgement of children.
The kernel is that there is a section of the elite that is so alienated from ordinary Americans that they sincerely believe that a) the Klan still exists in a serious way b) that there is some sort of nefarious white agenda c) that they need this to be true. These assumptions would be laughable if they weren’t so widespread. To me that’s an opportunity to debunk these ideas by looking at the actual reasons why people voted for Trump, exposing the risible idea that the klan is a force, and most importantly showing that this pretense that America is driven by racism stems from their own lack of moral legitimacy. Lots of ways to do that with rational argument. They won’t respond to it but the people of good faith that care about the future will.
Reason, the frailest of human faculties. You say we should depend on Reason? Have you not noticed how singularly uninterested in debate progressives are? And meanwhile, from today’s stories, CNN ponders how to deplatform Newsmaxx. Where is “rational argument” now?
If we don't have reason, what do we have? Emotion? Don't get me wrong, I understand the frustration but I can't help but think that there is no substitute for building a movement from the ground up on the basis solid principles like freedom of speech, freedom of association, good faith, etc. It's not going to happen instantly, but it seems a better alternative than ratcheting up the outrage and the tribalism so that it becomes impossible for people to listen to one another, let alone to change their views.
I have never doubted that what you say is true enough. But what I find most offensive now, and I see it in the best of us, is the pretense that truth can be found everywhere, in everything. The fact is you voted for Biden or Trump.
Character: compared to what? Shallow bullshit. I love you but you're wrong.
I'm a lifelong Democrat, but what choice did I have but to vote for Trump? He comes closest to the values I've held all my life. Speech, due process, rule of law, equal opportunity.
Is Biden an example of character or superior character? Really? What about Obama, Bush, Bill Clinton? Who is the example? How does one judge? Is it a matter of education, breeding, class? Is character more important than policy?
Is character in telling the truth, fulfilling commitments, personal dignity? If so, where is the example? Did FDR have character?
Or is character in conceiving of one’s duty as serving the people who elected you, serving the country and the constitution?
Trump served a part of the electorate that was criminally lied to and neglected for thirty years, but the benefits instead spread across all kinds of people. Trump was under vicious attack from the beginning to the end of his presidency, not for blunders of etiquette, but for his opposition to progressivism.
Maybe Trump lost the election, but still, a lot of people think he didn't—because there was a mountain of evidence that no one in the establishment wanted to look at. I recall no comprehensive negation by any party. I recall dismissal. Certainly, it can be said that the Democrats took no trouble to hide that they wanted to steal the election. Certainly it can be said positively that the Democrat solution to the mountain of true or false evidence was to suppress the discussion. Tell me, how does suppression of speech speak to character?
What is the appropriate redress for a stolen election? In a world of grievances, is it greater or smaller that the historical grievances our founders had? I'd like to hear the argument.
There really just wasn't a mountain of evidence though. Saying that doesn't make it so. You could find anecdotal, unverified reports of fraud in literally any election; you can also find anecdotal, unverified reports of demonic possessions. There is only evidence of a few isolated incidences of actual fraud for both Trump and Biden. The election wasn't close enough for fraud exclusively in favor of Biden to plausibly have made the difference. It's important to our institutions that people accept the results of an election, not play mind games with <0.1% possibilities.
And it's wrong on the core assumption: there was never really a point in the months leading up to the election where it seemed like Trump was going to win the election if you were following the best elections analysts (also, if you were following FiveThirtyEight in 2016, you would have known that the media's depiction of Hillary as almost certain to win the election was extremely misleading based on the polling which showed it close). People distrusted the media so much after that that they went into Election Night expecting Trump to win, even though the the polls in 2020 showed Biden winning in a landslide. And it was clear from the late hours of the 3rd/wee hours of the 4th that Biden was likely to win the election based on how heavily he was winning the absentee ballots which were counted after the Election Day ballots in most states. The entire perception of a stolen election hinges on the perception that Trump was ahead, and then Biden pulled ahead at the 11th hour, but that wasn't really true. That was just the way it was depicted in right-wing media sources.
If you would like to talk about this more could you send me an email at josephcaskey4@outlook.com I love connecting with new people about these topics.
Great reply. I've always considered myself a liberal and still do. I voted for Obama twice and it wasn't until I paid more attention that I realized how corrupt the establishment politicians (and Obama) was. I haven't stopped being liberal simply because I agree more with Thomas Sowell's arguments on economics than what the modern day left proposes. I didn't become a republican suddenly because I voted for Trump because he opposed the same excesses that I opposed. Character aside, many who voted for him understood that character as a midwestern attitude. He didn't talk down to the average person. And he criticized the elites, including himself. He was an imperfect avatar, but 90% of what we were told he was by the media and Democrats were false at every turn. Where is the criticism by Loury or McWhorter at the media, the real driving force in the "self fulfilled prophecy" of optics about Trump? January 6th happened because of their dismissals of concerns for half the population. And the media and Democrats seemed poised to continue down this path of framing the desire for an investigation or debate as conspiratorial. That is dangerous. Not Trump. That has always been the danger. Is the rhetoric of the establishment class.
Glenn, I have a great deal of respect for you. I have appreciated the conversations you and Dr. McWhorter have engaged in with honesty and courage.
I am looking at your mea culpa here after Trump has won the 2024 race. I wonder if your thoughts have changed any. It has been a few months since your videos have appeared as regularly as they once did in my YouTube feeds.
As Trump begins to end wars, improve the economy, expose the corruption in the Deep State, have RFK, Jr. expose the corruption in Big Pharma, the FDA, and to move toward a healthier American future in all of these ways, I feel you will come to some measured conclusion that will sound something like, “Pugnacious, sophomoric jerks might, however unexpectedly, make the best leaders in a culture like ours.”
Any thoughts?
And pretty much everything else.
No idea what you are trying to say.
Ouch
Character is destiny in so many ways. I did not vote for Trump. I don't think he held up any values apart from his love of himself and of power. He worked very, very hard but that in itself is nothing to admire if the ultimate goal is to have a gangster's grip on America. He's been called great many things but to me both those praising him and those calling him names missed the only relevant reality: that he never cared about anything or anyone except for himself. That was obvious to me. Fran Liebowitz, one of my heroines, isolated the basics: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fran+liebowitz+on+donald+trump+&t=newext&atb=v225-1&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DYMqeQiXtK8U
You say:
"It's not seditious to wonder whether or not irregularities ought to be investigated in an electoral process. There are irregularities all the time in elections."
I agree but it might be if investigations by honest people had been conducted and everyone and their dog agrees there were no substantial irregularities and YOU KNOW IT but you sow doubt in the electoral process in bad faith, not even believing what you are saying.
Trump should have been impeached and removed from office when he said there were millions of illegal votes cast in the 2016 election without any evidence. It was investigated and found to be false. A President who lies about matters so fundamental to democracy should not hold office. The truth should matter. If there were any real facts supporting the idea that there was widespread corruption in the way the vote was conducted then all these extremely talented people on the case would have had some success with the courts over the last two months.
As for deplatforming. Do private companies not have the right to establish rules for their platform? It is hilarious to watch people like Devin Nunes complaining on the most successful and popular cable news outlet that he is being silenced. If only that were possible.
If we want character to matter then we need to impeach and remove from office all those who lie in bad faith.
You can be ideologically pure or effective, you can’t be both. Unfortunately, most are choosing the former.
Trump’s intelligence – To call a person who, by all accounts is a political outsider, capable of manipulating the system to rise to what many consider the most powerful political position in the world stupid was the democrats first mistake. Trump is smart. Maybe not in the traditional academic sense, but smart as a fox.
Trump’s danger - If you believe that the rise of Trump to power was a symptom of underlying political unrest and not the cause, than the extent of Trump’s danger to democracy is currently unknown. A more violent, extremest leader could rise through the ranks, making Trump look civil in comparison.
Election Integrity - The vast majority of experts rate our election system as dysfunctional compared to many European systems.
A 2019 report by Harvard University's Electoral Integrity Project found that the United States had the second-lowest integrity score among liberal democracies for elections between 2012 and 2018. The country was ranked at No. 57 overall. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-10-07/us-elections-compare-poorly-to-other-democracies-research-shows
Even John's progressive New York remains in the bottom quarter compared to other US states. https://elections.mit.edu/#/data/map
Danger – We are reproducing similar conditions for white males that existed prior to WWII. Our political figures, our elite, our intelligentsia are unable to see the damage being caused to the social experiment that is America by the prevalent theories of social discourse, interactions and narrative.
Cliff, Mark; it seems to a large degree we agree about many of the systematic issues that gave rise to Trump, that have generally been neglected, dismissed, or covered-up by the political establishment and media (I would argue on both "sides"); maybe where we disagree is just about how much Trump himself is/was a problem in his own right, even if he's just an effect, not a cause of the bigger issues at play; I certainly do not disagree that his "badness" or "stupidity" has been overplayed relative to the important factors that our country and world are facing.
MT, specifically with regard to your (2), I think I pretty much said the same. I who am really skeptical about most of the outrageous claims about election fraud, from the beginning had wished for a thorough live, 24-hour streamed election fraud investigation. I would have paid to watch this; I would have paid to have the most radical conspiratorial people make their claims live on television and have them thoughtfully disproven; or hell, maybe shown to be true. I would have been happier to find out some truly malicious things took place in either direction for the good of the integrity of our system, however as I mentioned before those who stormed the Capitol would likely not believe anything they saw or heard if it didn't reinforce their pre-established beliefs.
And about (i) I don't see any reason to impeach, neither legal nor practical. I think the longer-term, overall problems created by further alienating many millions of people is worse than the potential of risk of him running and winning again or the benefits gained from "rebuking" him in some official way. The real hope is that all of this leads to both parties (and hopefully some 3rd parties) learn from the last four years and start to attend to the real issues we are all concerned about and not make Trump straw-man.
I believe John McWhorter’s assessment of Trump’s character as a “truly narcissistic, empty, heartless being,” is correct, which is why I never voted for Trump. Full disclosure, I felt the same about Hillary Clinton and as such refused to vote for President in 2016 (I voted in local elections). As someone not registered as a Republican or Democrat in a state that does not allow me to vote in the primaries (NY), I stood at the voting booth asking myself “is this really the best America has to offer”? Conversely, this begs the question “can a person of integrity, humility, and grace survive the political meat grinder to rise to the presidency”? What role do single issue voters have on the calculus that is the American politic? What role does the echo chamber created by computational algorithms lead to confirmational bias and further the political divide? Finally, and most importantly, what will it take to break through these log jams to make America the better place it can be?
I have read the extract several times and it becomes more difficult at each reading (which probably says something about me rather than the Professors – my excuses – I’m in the U.K. so it’s not my business, and I don’t have a political ‘home’ in the U.K. and I doubt I would have one in the U.S.A.). For what it is worth, from my uninformed perspective across the pond, the two arguments I cannot understand from Professor Loury are:
(1) The argument to take away the right to contract, and get people to agree with you.
In disavowing President Trump at this moment, Professor Loury, even though he recognises the situation, appears to support one set of people casually removing the right to contract from another group who hold different beliefs. Taking a position that in anyway associates with the removal of the right to contract (no employment, no banking, no communication platforms, no professional body membership etc. ) from roughly half a country appears extremely dangerous. The list of witches will be as long as one group can get away with, or as long as needed to suppress a belief/group. The position is made worse, rather than better, by the statement,
“You don't kill Trumpism until you talk to the 70 million people who voted for him and get at least 15 or 20 million of them to agree with you. That's the task at hand.”
I’ll repeat, “get them to agree with you”, what does that mean? Surely the aim would be to hear and understand these people’s concerns, so that they are acknowledged effectively in policy?
(2) Applying the ‘character argument’ to President Trump alone.
If a character argument can be made then it should be applied to all Members of Congress of both parties, and presumably also to State Legislatures. It seems peculiar to focus only on President Trump. Professor Loury seems to recognise the ‘fine people hoax’ constructed after Charlottesville, is a hoax, nonetheless, the President Elect has used the hoax, both before the election and afterwards. What kind of character is the President Elect to use a hoax about one of the most sensitive and divisive issues in the U.S.A?
Professor Loury wonders, “Perhaps there should have been a commission to investigate”, specifically within the context of mail-in ballots, but does not use this to question the character of all Members of Congress, and the President Elect. What character must these people have if they did not immediately agree to both a forensic audit and a wide ranging commission on democratic transparency? Without this surely they are all responsible for inciting what happened, surely they are all responsible for not delivering confidence in a fair and transparent election, surely they are all of the wrong character to be in elected office?
Before I use a short list, I should state that there have been caes of problems in U.K. elections, there are also ongoing arguments about I.D. and mail in ballots, local and Mayoral elections were even delayed from last year to this year (due to Covid), so when I imagine the following list, it is definitely not from a position of presumed superiority.
An imagined list of potential concerns might be:
(i) free and fair election (e.g. media and the hoaxes, a politically motivated first impeachment, the taking down of funding sites, freezing the NYP on Twitter, billionaire funding of the electoral system, threat of violence/cancelling/doxing …),
(ii) unconstitutionally made changes to the electoral process in some states (so signalling against the Constitution, so accepting otherwise illegal ballots, so increasing the opportunity for fraud …),
(iii) the lists of alleged fraudulent registration provided by the, so called, Voter Integrity Project,
(iv) the apparently low signature rejection rates,
(v) the lack of meaningful observation,
(vi) technology concerns (non-open source software, non-separation of responsibilities, other connected and storage devices in counting rooms, custody chains, adjudication, young privilege due to voting machine complexity …),
(vii) delay of DNI report to Congress on potential foreign interference
etc …
I do not know what the actual list of concerns is, but if there were concerns shared by millions then politicians of good character would have sought to address these concerns, if they have not then they are all not of good character and not fit for office.
Well that was quite a bit of typing given that I am not American and it is not my business, probably a side-effect of lockdown, but I’ll call it an outside perspective. As an aside, I will say that Professor McWhorter’s comment, “ we're talking about the idea that an actual functioning human being can walk around believing in Q”, made me chuckle. I wonder whether professors can walk around believing that elections are free, fair and transparent. I recall a slightly related comment from Professor Heather McDonald to Professor Loury (Manhattan Institute October 2020), “I don't believe in conspiracy theories, but I'm moving to the point now where I do think it is conceivable that China is the funder of our diversity ideology”, so perhaps some professors do worry.
P.S. great discussion!
I agree with your sentiments but I don't believe your first point can be couched in the "right to contract"–which we lost in the new deal anyway. While this deplatforming concerns me as a radical departure from the status quo, and I think it violates Burkian societal norms, circumstances are actually fundamentally opposite of the term of art you invoke.
The "right to contract" includes the right of Amazon to kick anybody it wants off its cloud; and Twitter as the party to the contract to eliminate twits on its terms; ditto Facebook, Youtube etc.
And the arguments against this deplatforming are just the arguments raised in defense of government intervention in labor and consumer markets which ended the right to contract. One party to the contract has more power than the other, so the government has to set the rules to protect the powerless.
There was always a more libertarian current on the internet. Maybe it is a place where the right to contract still exists, just as exemplified by the various bile attendant to the wild, wild, west of discourse as by the actions of the FANG entities this past week. We could as readily condemn the brilliant hands off strategy on the internet as having lead to the violence at the Capitol as to choose Trump.
In the end we can only hope that Facebook goes the way of Myspace in the wake of such craven insinuation with the woke mob and against the deplorable one. Some platform will get this and figure out how to be a place for those disenfranchised by the leftward cant of social media giants without being just a cesspool for their waste. I have little doubt of it as social media, in it's less censorious recent past, was where the right flourished. It is a far more critical tool for the right whose arguments are indiscriminately ruled outside polite conversation in the mainstream media, but we should get over the idea that culturally sensitive corporations are the gatekeepers to other than their own estates.
I find your points with merit, but would add 3 things.
1. You dichotomize (black/white) your character argument. Suggesting people/politicians are all good or bad, fit or unfit for office, while I think it is obvious morality, character, and fitness are all qualities on a spectrum. Is it irrational to argue that Trump (or anyone else) might be of particularly poor character and particularly dangerous for office? I don't think so, but you will be tasked with making this point with solid evidence.
2. The election issue is principally about Trump and his elk "feeling" that the election was stolen, and his inability to accept the reality in which he might have lost; and I believe his character defect (certainly combined with our political climate, media propaganda/corporatism, and social media/internet) shows here; he would rather fuel the fire that sews major discord in the country than accept defeat. We could make the same investigations into previous elections throughout history if one of the parties "felt" they must be wrong, but generally they accepted the elections as having been legitimate.
Lastly, all the investigations and evidence disproving fraud in the world about this election would not plant a seed of doubt into the "Q" believers that you blasely compare to a professor believing in free, fair, and transparent elections, as if those two beliefs are even remotely equivalent. Again, there is a spectrum of belief and disbelief. One can believe that even flawed elections are on the whole legitimate and "Fair" and be considered of sound mind. Can you say the same about the Q-believer? This is not to dismiss the very real conspiracies that do exist in many elements of life that ought to be addressed and whatever works needs to be done to restore trust in our political system, which goes far beyond Trump and before him. However, like John pointed out, just like with religion, just like with the woke-left, the Q-folks are impervious to reason or evidence. Any disproving of their belief system with sound argument or proof can simply be dismissed by saying "that's just another level of deep-state" at work, so I have doubts about how they can be reached and if they deserve the same categorization as your professor walking around thinking elections are on the whole legitimate.
I also find your points reasonable.
1) I agree I do dichotomise the character argument, but if it is to (can) be applied it should be applied to all. You may well be right in implying that it is not irrational to argue that an individual could be of danger to office, but this possibility may be inevitable if one wants an executive that is able to act. Nonetheless, I tried to argue that disavowing President Trump now has large costs / dangers. Perhaps two follow on points are
(i) is Section 4 of the 25th Amendment adequate, and sufficiently robust against purely political use (I guess that apart form the Q folks, many will think V.P. Pence was capable of making the decision) and, I think more importantly,
(ii) what is the context that creates and allows candidates to make competent runs for office even though others believe they are particularly dangerous? At the moment I am thinking of the bloggingheads discussion Prof Loury had with Prof Daniel Markovits, on the latter’s book, ‘The Meritoracy Trap’. If a system continues to grow the separation of an elite from, say, a non-college class, then such ‘populist’ candidates will arise, whether Sanders or Trump. Simply the production of candidates may not actually be sufficient though, one thinks back to 1970 and the concerns raised by Ivan Illich on “the institutionalization of values”. Anyway, I am drifting way out of my depth, so will stop this line of thought.
2) Even if the election issue is principally President Trump’s elk “feeling” this is does not mean the response should be directly targeted at the President. (i) It is possible for experienced people to have good (or bad) intuition from fuzzy data and (ii) perhaps systems should not allow wrong intuitions to gain traction, but rather than do this by censoring discussion it ought to be possible to demonstrate the intuitions are wrong – free, fair and transparent might be preferable to commission and audit, but something ‘feels’ needed. And I would agree, all elections, not just this one (nor just the U.S.A, but it is a model for the rest).
In terms of your final paragraph, I am in a little more disagreement. I agree that equating Q-stuff and belief in free, fair, transparent elections is not valid. Nonetheless, I think the point stands, because of their relative importance one should attach similar priors to them - though not resources.
Good stuff. Thanks for taking the time to write this.
I second that, and stand chastened...
You assumed good faith, if not exactly in Trump, in the voters. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I think it’s right to demand robust evidence of malfeasance, and not to be cynical. The problem we have we have is not just a rise in bad faith but a really unhinged sense among major sections of society that they *just know* the truth. It’s a strange subjectivism where people think they have a special insight into reality that means they see things that the rest of us poor schmucks don’t. This moral certitude is dangerous whether it’s from die-hard Trump people or the woke left and their enablers.
Being lied to 24/7 inspires self-reliance, doesn’t it? You come to ignore everything but the direction the shadows are moving.
The thing is, the media genuinely don’t see what they are doing as lying. The are practicing the journalism of attachment in which you tell the Greater Truth. It’s a real problem. The problem with assuming they are lying is that it’s easy to miss the kernel of truth in what’s being written and form an opposing impression that is equally skewed.
When Don Lemon likens Trump supporters to Klan members, where should I pick for the kernel? I have nothing but fury for the drone who calls me or my kind racist. I have lived too long with decency in my heart about the issue to tolerate the judgement of children.
The kernel is that there is a section of the elite that is so alienated from ordinary Americans that they sincerely believe that a) the Klan still exists in a serious way b) that there is some sort of nefarious white agenda c) that they need this to be true. These assumptions would be laughable if they weren’t so widespread. To me that’s an opportunity to debunk these ideas by looking at the actual reasons why people voted for Trump, exposing the risible idea that the klan is a force, and most importantly showing that this pretense that America is driven by racism stems from their own lack of moral legitimacy. Lots of ways to do that with rational argument. They won’t respond to it but the people of good faith that care about the future will.
Reason, the frailest of human faculties. You say we should depend on Reason? Have you not noticed how singularly uninterested in debate progressives are? And meanwhile, from today’s stories, CNN ponders how to deplatform Newsmaxx. Where is “rational argument” now?
https://www.newsmax.com/us/cnn-cancel-culture-big-tech-censorship/2021/01/17/id/1006021/
If we don't have reason, what do we have? Emotion? Don't get me wrong, I understand the frustration but I can't help but think that there is no substitute for building a movement from the ground up on the basis solid principles like freedom of speech, freedom of association, good faith, etc. It's not going to happen instantly, but it seems a better alternative than ratcheting up the outrage and the tribalism so that it becomes impossible for people to listen to one another, let alone to change their views.
I have never doubted that what you say is true enough. But what I find most offensive now, and I see it in the best of us, is the pretense that truth can be found everywhere, in everything. The fact is you voted for Biden or Trump.
Character: compared to what? Shallow bullshit. I love you but you're wrong.
I'm a lifelong Democrat, but what choice did I have but to vote for Trump? He comes closest to the values I've held all my life. Speech, due process, rule of law, equal opportunity.
Is Biden an example of character or superior character? Really? What about Obama, Bush, Bill Clinton? Who is the example? How does one judge? Is it a matter of education, breeding, class? Is character more important than policy?
Is character in telling the truth, fulfilling commitments, personal dignity? If so, where is the example? Did FDR have character?
Or is character in conceiving of one’s duty as serving the people who elected you, serving the country and the constitution?
Trump served a part of the electorate that was criminally lied to and neglected for thirty years, but the benefits instead spread across all kinds of people. Trump was under vicious attack from the beginning to the end of his presidency, not for blunders of etiquette, but for his opposition to progressivism.
Maybe Trump lost the election, but still, a lot of people think he didn't—because there was a mountain of evidence that no one in the establishment wanted to look at. I recall no comprehensive negation by any party. I recall dismissal. Certainly, it can be said that the Democrats took no trouble to hide that they wanted to steal the election. Certainly it can be said positively that the Democrat solution to the mountain of true or false evidence was to suppress the discussion. Tell me, how does suppression of speech speak to character?
What is the appropriate redress for a stolen election? In a world of grievances, is it greater or smaller that the historical grievances our founders had? I'd like to hear the argument.
There really just wasn't a mountain of evidence though. Saying that doesn't make it so. You could find anecdotal, unverified reports of fraud in literally any election; you can also find anecdotal, unverified reports of demonic possessions. There is only evidence of a few isolated incidences of actual fraud for both Trump and Biden. The election wasn't close enough for fraud exclusively in favor of Biden to plausibly have made the difference. It's important to our institutions that people accept the results of an election, not play mind games with <0.1% possibilities.
And it's wrong on the core assumption: there was never really a point in the months leading up to the election where it seemed like Trump was going to win the election if you were following the best elections analysts (also, if you were following FiveThirtyEight in 2016, you would have known that the media's depiction of Hillary as almost certain to win the election was extremely misleading based on the polling which showed it close). People distrusted the media so much after that that they went into Election Night expecting Trump to win, even though the the polls in 2020 showed Biden winning in a landslide. And it was clear from the late hours of the 3rd/wee hours of the 4th that Biden was likely to win the election based on how heavily he was winning the absentee ballots which were counted after the Election Day ballots in most states. The entire perception of a stolen election hinges on the perception that Trump was ahead, and then Biden pulled ahead at the 11th hour, but that wasn't really true. That was just the way it was depicted in right-wing media sources.
If you would like to talk about this more could you send me an email at josephcaskey4@outlook.com I love connecting with new people about these topics.
Great reply. I've always considered myself a liberal and still do. I voted for Obama twice and it wasn't until I paid more attention that I realized how corrupt the establishment politicians (and Obama) was. I haven't stopped being liberal simply because I agree more with Thomas Sowell's arguments on economics than what the modern day left proposes. I didn't become a republican suddenly because I voted for Trump because he opposed the same excesses that I opposed. Character aside, many who voted for him understood that character as a midwestern attitude. He didn't talk down to the average person. And he criticized the elites, including himself. He was an imperfect avatar, but 90% of what we were told he was by the media and Democrats were false at every turn. Where is the criticism by Loury or McWhorter at the media, the real driving force in the "self fulfilled prophecy" of optics about Trump? January 6th happened because of their dismissals of concerns for half the population. And the media and Democrats seemed poised to continue down this path of framing the desire for an investigation or debate as conspiratorial. That is dangerous. Not Trump. That has always been the danger. Is the rhetoric of the establishment class.