Glenn makes cogent observations when he says: "With respect, I can’t help but feel that John is making a fetish of complexity here, which is something of a habit for his political tribe. Liberals sometimes act as though they have a monopoly on “nuance” ... If your argument against strong border policy is Trump makes it sound 'too easy,' you haven’t addressed the policy itself, only the messaging around it. That’s taking a different kind of easy way out."
I'll take the liberty to make a few other points, however peripheral they may seem. The appeal to "nuance" is a tried-and-true debating tactic, often used when one is insufficiently convinced of the weight of their arguments on their face. As a historian, I encounter this on subjects ranging from Heian court literature to Homeric scholarship. It is not uncommon to read that certain views are "illusory" due to those who hold them not sufficiently grasping all the nuance of the language, the culture, the history and the muddling effects of intervening centuries. When things get heated (which they do), the implication can be that "I can't adequately explain this to you because you are too ignorant, too parochial, and/or simply don't have the intellectual horsepower to fully appreciate what I'm saying."
But there is another factor at work here, and I will go out on limb to suggest that John suffers from it to a greater degree than Glenn. Among specialists who ascend to the rarefied heights of their field, there is a documented tendency for the nuances -- that is, the fine-grained or high-resolution understanding of the subject -- to take on outsized significance. This is to a degree natural, in that it is primarily this high-resolution understanding that separates the specialist from the layman, even it the layman's faculties are other wise on par, and it is source of pride, prestige and self-worth. There's nothing wrong with that; such understanding is achieved only with great effort and dedication and is certainly deserving of all of those things.
But without sufficient tethering to the "real world" -- or one might say, the foundations on which the expertise rests -- this amplified attachment to the fine-grained details can have a distorting effect. In this regard, I find it interesting that John is a linguist and Glenn is an economist. Linguistics is a rather rarefied field of endeavor; economics deals fundamentally with real-world issues which are objective and concrete. Which field provides a stronger tether to the real world? Which field provides stronger feedback in regards to the correctness of theories proposed? If Glenn advances a theory and it is believed and implemented, there are real world consequences for people's livelihood. If John advances a theory of the evolution of a language, is anyone's livelihood on the line? This is not to disparage John's work anymore than I, or anyone, should disparage the pursuit of higher mathematics or theoretical physics. The obvious value of these fields, as well as the arts and other realms of human endeavor that appear to lack immediate practical application, is not in question. But that John is drawn to one field and Glenn another says something about their character that likely informs their different views.
In regards to Trump, I believe it is safe to say that John's antipathy is an emotional predilection in search of a rational argument to support it. I don't think he holds a "nuanced" position here. I recall in another podcast that John's first response to the question of why he felt Trump was unfit to be president was that Trump is "a gorilla." He then went on to develop his theme, but that initial "knee-jerk" comment was hardly nuanced. The fact is that Trump is every bit as complex and nuanced a character as John is. They are both rather remarkable human beings.
The issue is that they approach life and issues in diametrically opposed ways. John is an academic; Trump is a builder and deal-maker. In both cases, there is the temptation to deride them with simplistic and cynical characterizations.
But there is something else about Trump that has transformed the situation: Trump is (in the argot of the day) a genuine badass. For time out of mind, politicians have been known for their posturing, assuming an appearance of strength or compassion, or trying to pass themselves off as a "common man" when raised in an environment of gold-plated privilege. In recent years, this lack of authenticity has metastasized into society at large (as the disturbing causal link between Instagram filters and the rise in cosmetic surgery alarmingly demonstrates).
Rarely does an event happen when the obscurations that some know of and many might suspect are ripped away. This has now happened twice in the past couple of months. The first was the debate and the second was the assassination attempt. The assassination attempt is the more catalyzing of the two, and revealed what was least suspected, and it happened while people were watching in real-time, utterly unfiltered.
The shock was not so much that someone took a shot at Trump (John's ill-considered previous comment is enough of a testimony to that). The shock is how Trump reacted. No one alive in this country has ever seen a political leader, former president and current candidate, react like that -- reveal the strength of his character in such a fundamental and galvanizing way.
It was a narrative-destroying moment -- the glass through which many viewed him, largely manufactured by his political opponents and outright enemies -- was shattered. The plain fact is that Trump is an authentic badass and that is causing many people, who either believed what they thought they saw or weren't sure what they saw but were nervous about it, to rethink and reassess. Trump has been president; he has a record to reflect on, he has a history that can now come into focus, independent of personal feelings about him.
There is also final point which should not be overlooked although it may currently be underappreciated. An authentic badass is not always going to be polite or temperate in their language or rhetoric. They are not always graceful and refined in their manner. They are not going wrap their positions or their arguments in the soft folds of "nuance." That is not who they are. That does not make them any less capable of compassion, of listening intently, of considering deeply, of appreciating nuanced arguments, but they will also "cut to the chase" and focus on the essentials.
Leadership is not about pondering all the "what if's" and "maybe's" and "but's" -- those are academic pursuits. Leadership is about identifying essential goals and devising workable strategies to accomplish them. Details are to be delegated (otherwise micromanaging happens with generally disastrous results); the leader's role is to monitor the progress and course-correct when needed: steadfast aim, flexible approach. To employ a military maxim: "A good plan executed now is far superior to a perfect plan executed next week (or next month)." To which can be added "A strong leader who makes some mistakes is far superior to a weak leader who makes none."
Finally, Clausewitz's dictum is apropos: "Everything in war is simple. But the simple is difficult (and can be complicated)." This, I think, puts paid to John's argument that MAGA is "'too easy' and overly simplistic to be reputable." (War being "the continuation politics by other means" and all that.) So John's comment about "it seems to me that the left requires you to work harder. The right doesn't require you to learn about Ukraine or to learn about what's happened in Palestine since the 1920s" reflects a blinkered "academic" view of the right. I could take an equally blinkered view and say something like: "The left doesn't require you to understand how to build a bridge that will survive a major earthquake." Neither view is much use. Lack of appreciation of the facts and inattention to them is not a "left-right" issue and making it one is a sign of emotional reasoning, not nuanced or or intellectually coherent view of the problem.
With deep appreciation and gratitude to Glenn for all his efforts and the opportunity to post these thoughts.
I thought John had the better of that exchange. MAGA was about bumper sticker claims first and then building a rationale for them afterward. A huge part of Trump convention speech was nothing but bumper sticker claims one after another.
Complexity is not always of the left and not always wrong. For example, consider the Reagan Republican-ish arguments about marginal tax rates. There, the simple argument belongs to the liberals ("people who earn more should pay more") and the more complicated but st leadt to some degree correct argument is the old conservative position, which relies on arguments about incentives and economic growth.
I will have to defer to you on Trump's convention speech. I have not heard it. I have not yet had occasion to watch a political convention of any party, attend a rally, etc. (I do see a wealth of bumper stickers, of course, as those as unavoidable.) I have found that rhetoric tends to be an unreliable indicator of policy, even if sincere, and policy is not always a reliable indicator of the ability to successful implement policy. I also believe that the saying "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" is true more often than not, that the devil is often in the details (but not always) and I largely take "The Gods of Copybook Headings" to heart. Since I am waxing metaphorical and dabbling in doggerel, I'll add "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. (Those who do learn from history will find new mistakes to make.)"
Who has learned what about which and how the Gods of the Copybook Headings will continue to weigh in remains to be seen. In my mind, the key question now is not so much about rhetoric, complexity, "ease" or even policy (though that remains important); the key question is about resilience in the face of adversity. Give me that, and I will happily debate all the rest. Fail in that, and the rest won't matter much.
Glenn makes cogent observations when he says: "With respect, I can’t help but feel that John is making a fetish of complexity here, which is something of a habit for his political tribe. Liberals sometimes act as though they have a monopoly on “nuance” ... If your argument against strong border policy is Trump makes it sound 'too easy,' you haven’t addressed the policy itself, only the messaging around it. That’s taking a different kind of easy way out."
I'll take the liberty to make a few other points, however peripheral they may seem. The appeal to "nuance" is a tried-and-true debating tactic, often used when one is insufficiently convinced of the weight of their arguments on their face. As a historian, I encounter this on subjects ranging from Heian court literature to Homeric scholarship. It is not uncommon to read that certain views are "illusory" due to those who hold them not sufficiently grasping all the nuance of the language, the culture, the history and the muddling effects of intervening centuries. When things get heated (which they do), the implication can be that "I can't adequately explain this to you because you are too ignorant, too parochial, and/or simply don't have the intellectual horsepower to fully appreciate what I'm saying."
But there is another factor at work here, and I will go out on limb to suggest that John suffers from it to a greater degree than Glenn. Among specialists who ascend to the rarefied heights of their field, there is a documented tendency for the nuances -- that is, the fine-grained or high-resolution understanding of the subject -- to take on outsized significance. This is to a degree natural, in that it is primarily this high-resolution understanding that separates the specialist from the layman, even it the layman's faculties are other wise on par, and it is source of pride, prestige and self-worth. There's nothing wrong with that; such understanding is achieved only with great effort and dedication and is certainly deserving of all of those things.
But without sufficient tethering to the "real world" -- or one might say, the foundations on which the expertise rests -- this amplified attachment to the fine-grained details can have a distorting effect. In this regard, I find it interesting that John is a linguist and Glenn is an economist. Linguistics is a rather rarefied field of endeavor; economics deals fundamentally with real-world issues which are objective and concrete. Which field provides a stronger tether to the real world? Which field provides stronger feedback in regards to the correctness of theories proposed? If Glenn advances a theory and it is believed and implemented, there are real world consequences for people's livelihood. If John advances a theory of the evolution of a language, is anyone's livelihood on the line? This is not to disparage John's work anymore than I, or anyone, should disparage the pursuit of higher mathematics or theoretical physics. The obvious value of these fields, as well as the arts and other realms of human endeavor that appear to lack immediate practical application, is not in question. But that John is drawn to one field and Glenn another says something about their character that likely informs their different views.
In regards to Trump, I believe it is safe to say that John's antipathy is an emotional predilection in search of a rational argument to support it. I don't think he holds a "nuanced" position here. I recall in another podcast that John's first response to the question of why he felt Trump was unfit to be president was that Trump is "a gorilla." He then went on to develop his theme, but that initial "knee-jerk" comment was hardly nuanced. The fact is that Trump is every bit as complex and nuanced a character as John is. They are both rather remarkable human beings.
The issue is that they approach life and issues in diametrically opposed ways. John is an academic; Trump is a builder and deal-maker. In both cases, there is the temptation to deride them with simplistic and cynical characterizations.
But there is something else about Trump that has transformed the situation: Trump is (in the argot of the day) a genuine badass. For time out of mind, politicians have been known for their posturing, assuming an appearance of strength or compassion, or trying to pass themselves off as a "common man" when raised in an environment of gold-plated privilege. In recent years, this lack of authenticity has metastasized into society at large (as the disturbing causal link between Instagram filters and the rise in cosmetic surgery alarmingly demonstrates).
Rarely does an event happen when the obscurations that some know of and many might suspect are ripped away. This has now happened twice in the past couple of months. The first was the debate and the second was the assassination attempt. The assassination attempt is the more catalyzing of the two, and revealed what was least suspected, and it happened while people were watching in real-time, utterly unfiltered.
The shock was not so much that someone took a shot at Trump (John's ill-considered previous comment is enough of a testimony to that). The shock is how Trump reacted. No one alive in this country has ever seen a political leader, former president and current candidate, react like that -- reveal the strength of his character in such a fundamental and galvanizing way.
It was a narrative-destroying moment -- the glass through which many viewed him, largely manufactured by his political opponents and outright enemies -- was shattered. The plain fact is that Trump is an authentic badass and that is causing many people, who either believed what they thought they saw or weren't sure what they saw but were nervous about it, to rethink and reassess. Trump has been president; he has a record to reflect on, he has a history that can now come into focus, independent of personal feelings about him.
There is also final point which should not be overlooked although it may currently be underappreciated. An authentic badass is not always going to be polite or temperate in their language or rhetoric. They are not always graceful and refined in their manner. They are not going wrap their positions or their arguments in the soft folds of "nuance." That is not who they are. That does not make them any less capable of compassion, of listening intently, of considering deeply, of appreciating nuanced arguments, but they will also "cut to the chase" and focus on the essentials.
Leadership is not about pondering all the "what if's" and "maybe's" and "but's" -- those are academic pursuits. Leadership is about identifying essential goals and devising workable strategies to accomplish them. Details are to be delegated (otherwise micromanaging happens with generally disastrous results); the leader's role is to monitor the progress and course-correct when needed: steadfast aim, flexible approach. To employ a military maxim: "A good plan executed now is far superior to a perfect plan executed next week (or next month)." To which can be added "A strong leader who makes some mistakes is far superior to a weak leader who makes none."
Finally, Clausewitz's dictum is apropos: "Everything in war is simple. But the simple is difficult (and can be complicated)." This, I think, puts paid to John's argument that MAGA is "'too easy' and overly simplistic to be reputable." (War being "the continuation politics by other means" and all that.) So John's comment about "it seems to me that the left requires you to work harder. The right doesn't require you to learn about Ukraine or to learn about what's happened in Palestine since the 1920s" reflects a blinkered "academic" view of the right. I could take an equally blinkered view and say something like: "The left doesn't require you to understand how to build a bridge that will survive a major earthquake." Neither view is much use. Lack of appreciation of the facts and inattention to them is not a "left-right" issue and making it one is a sign of emotional reasoning, not nuanced or or intellectually coherent view of the problem.
With deep appreciation and gratitude to Glenn for all his efforts and the opportunity to post these thoughts.
I thought John had the better of that exchange. MAGA was about bumper sticker claims first and then building a rationale for them afterward. A huge part of Trump convention speech was nothing but bumper sticker claims one after another.
Complexity is not always of the left and not always wrong. For example, consider the Reagan Republican-ish arguments about marginal tax rates. There, the simple argument belongs to the liberals ("people who earn more should pay more") and the more complicated but st leadt to some degree correct argument is the old conservative position, which relies on arguments about incentives and economic growth.
Michael,
I will have to defer to you on Trump's convention speech. I have not heard it. I have not yet had occasion to watch a political convention of any party, attend a rally, etc. (I do see a wealth of bumper stickers, of course, as those as unavoidable.) I have found that rhetoric tends to be an unreliable indicator of policy, even if sincere, and policy is not always a reliable indicator of the ability to successful implement policy. I also believe that the saying "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" is true more often than not, that the devil is often in the details (but not always) and I largely take "The Gods of Copybook Headings" to heart. Since I am waxing metaphorical and dabbling in doggerel, I'll add "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. (Those who do learn from history will find new mistakes to make.)"
Who has learned what about which and how the Gods of the Copybook Headings will continue to weigh in remains to be seen. In my mind, the key question now is not so much about rhetoric, complexity, "ease" or even policy (though that remains important); the key question is about resilience in the face of adversity. Give me that, and I will happily debate all the rest. Fail in that, and the rest won't matter much.