Now that a real president is poised to fight the pandemic – as Joe Biden said the other day, “There’s a whole range of things that have to be done quickly” – the self-pitying lame duck, an impeached two-time popular vote loser, has been freed from the job he never knew how to do.
As evidenced last night from Trump’s inauguration of a new art form – the post-election super-spreader loser rally – his sole aim in his waning days is to denigrate democracy and indulge his delusions. He said he won Wisconsin (he didn’t), he said he won Georgia (he didn’t), he lied that votes mysteriously came out of “ceilings” and “leather bags” – indeed he lied with the alacrity we long ago came to loathe – but at this point I’m more interested in the sheep who still show up to bleat at his every utterance. The math of the 2020 election is ironclad, but Trump can’t abide it because he’s a very sick puppy. But what about the MAGA sheep? What’s their excuse?
They’ve put me in a philosophical mood today. Let’s start with John Locke, the esteemed 17-century English thinker. He recognized his fellow man’s propensity for irrational stupidity. In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he lamented that people are too often swept away by “enthusiasm, in which reason is taken away.” As he explained, “the love of truth” is defeated by competing impulses such as “laziness…the tedious and not always successful labor of strict reasoning,” and “the fear that an impartial inquiry would not favor those opinions which best suit their prejudices, lives, and designs.”
Since we’re in the 17th century, let’s visit Rene Descartes, the French philosopher, who said that people all too often choose to dwell in the realm of mindless “speculations” – indeed, “the more they are removed from common sense, the more pride they will take in them.”
The MAGA sheep would say that my decision to quote fancypants philosophers clearly marks me as an “elitist.” Well, excuse me for trying to think.
They’ve also put me in a literary mood. I recall what Hungarian writer Arthur Koestler said about cultists (he spent seven years inside the cult of communism). Sheep-like cultists experience what he called “mental rapture.” Rational thought is expunged. Instead, “the new light seems to pour from all directions across the skull; the whole universe falls into pattern like the stray pieces of a jigsaw puzzle assembled by magic at one stroke.”
All that’s needed is a Leader (even one who has been repudiated by a record 81.3 million votes) to simplify the puzzle, the way Trump did last night: “We’re all victims. Everybody here. All these thousands of people here tonight. They’re all victims. Every one of you.”
The Leader’s job is to goad the sheep to believe the fantastical and embrace the impossible (like overturning a free and fair election). He’s like the Queen in Lewis Carroll’s famous book:
“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.
“Can’t you?” the Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again. Draw a long breath and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying. One can’t believe in impossible things.”
“I dare say you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
And once you get sheep to embrace the impossible, it’s inevitable that they’ll bleat on cue, like the way they recited the rote maxim in Orwell’s Animal Farm: “Four legs good, two legs bad!”
Now that I’ve referenced Orwell – as you knew I would – what we badly need right now is some sober rationality. Over to you, Justice Brian Hagedorn.
Hagedorn, the ex-legal counsel for conservative Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, sits on that state’s Supreme Court. On Friday, he rejected Trump’s dog-and-pony bid to overthrow Biden’s win. Writing for the majority, he nuked Trump’s authoritarian pretenses: “At stake, in some measure, is our system of free and fair elections, a feature central to our enduring strength in our constitutional republic…This petition does not merit further consideration by this court, much less grant us a license to invalidate every single vote cast in Wisconsin’s 2020 presidential election…In these hallowed halls, the law must rule.”
I suppose that makes him an “elitist,” too. But thinking trumps bleating every time.
I taught high school math in a very small town in Wyoming for two years. After watching the sheep behave after this election, i am, more than ever, so very angry at the state of our public education all over this country. An entire year on critical thinking should be required. Taught by thinkers, not the sheep. Perhaps tied to learning the principles that undergird our constitution. Something must be done.
Critical thinking is a good thing to teach (in a variety of subjects); but what can be taught earlier is =civics=. In fifth grade we learned about the structures of our state and federal governments, what each element did, how our representatives were elected (and judges appointed), and how “checks and balances” worked.
I recently had a conversation with a recent graduate of an elite high school, and his college-educated mother. They wondered what the Electoral College is, and what it does. It was news to them that each state has two senators, but a number of congressmen varying with population. It was sad.