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Tragic Wisdom for Turbulent Times

Fresno Bee, Nov. 16, 2024

The American electoral scene offers some lessons in wisdom: When Trump lost in 2020, Republicans went mad with accusations of a stolen election. Now, it is Democrats who are outraged and wailing in grief and anger.

These wild swings of emotion are a sign of a culture out of balance. Our world is afflicted by an immoderate temper and a lack of wisdom. Part of the problem is the expectation that things will always work out as we want them to. But it is not true that everything happens for a reason, nor is it true that the arc of the universe bends toward justice or that progress and enlightenment are inevitable.

Progress is painstaking and never guaranteed. The crooked timber of humanity cannot be made straight. Corrupt individuals seize power, people make unwise decisions and sometimes evil triumphs over good.

Most of the world’s wisdom traditions affirm this tragic insight: The first truth of Buddhism is that life is suffering, and Christianity requires a bloody sacrifice to wash away the wages of sin.

We should not be surprised when things go wrong. The political world is not a morality play written by a benevolent author. Rather, history unfolds by hook and by crook, as mortal men struggle for power. Acknowledging this ugly feature of human reality can provide some comfort. Suffering is par for the course and no one can escape the agony of defeat.

In stormy times, it helps to consult the tragic wisdom of the ancient philosophers. Aristotle teaches that happiness requires a rare conjunction of wisdom and good fortune. He reminds us to count no one happy until they are dead. He meant that decades of good luck can be destroyed in an instant when things go horribly wrong. And, in fact, Aristotle had to flee for his life as Athens collapsed around him.

The Stoic philosophers cultivated similarly tragic soil. The Roman Stoic Seneca advises us to distrust prosperity, to prepare for adversity and to realize that fortune will do whatever she pleases. Like Aristotle, Seneca was buffeted by political misfortune (he was ordered to kill himself by the emperor Nero).

Stoic sages advise us to stop wailing and complaining. Do not be disturbed by the way things are. Things rarely work out according to plan. This is simply the way of the world. There is nothing you can do about history and the larger forces of the universe.

But you can control your own virtue. You have the power to choose how you respond to life’s tragedies. Key values here are courage, fortitude, resilience and tenacity.

It is important to avoid the despair and anger that appear when we find out that it’s not “all good.” If you expect everything to work out as you want it to, you will be sorely disappointed. You may be tempted to give up or lash out in furious frustration, but it is wiser to acknowledge that things often do go wrong.

Prepare for the worst, and do your best. The only thing in your control is the way you react to life’s vicissitudes.

It is also useful to give thanks when things go well. The good times should be greeted as welcome exceptions rather than the norm. There is usually something to be grateful for, even in a storm.

You should also forgive yourself when you fail. Everyone fails. It’s not easy to be good, so when you do fail, don’t beat yourself up about it — failure is par for the course. The heroes of living respond to failure with tenacity and they keep working at living well, even when the odds are against them.

The true test of character is not found in success. It is found in how well you recover from defeat.

Tragic wisdom offers consolation. Truth, virtue and happiness are rare commodities. The good is often overpowered by falsehood and vice. In this vale of tears, a good life is not guaranteed. It is unusual for intelligence, righteousness and good fortune to converge. But in understanding the fragility of goodness, we discover wisdom. And if we work at it, we can find the strength to remain upright in the face of the storm.

Read more at: https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article295556909.html#storylink=cpy

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The Second Coming of Donald Trump and The Temptation of Hyperbole

Trump 2.0 will no doubt be as chaotic as Trump 1.0. But despite the hyperbolic effusions of the political class, the country will likely stumble along, divided among red and blue partisans and another third who simply don’t care (as I discussed in a recent column). The American Republic will not collapse with Trump’s political resurrection. Nor has the messiah returned with Trump’s second coming.

We would be wise to avoid hyperventilating and to keep things in perspective. On both left and right, the tendency to exaggerate can undermine critical thinking. 

Trump is among the worst of those who exaggerate and embellish. In his victory speech Trump said, “God spared my life for a reason.” And, “This will truly be the golden age of America.” Trump’s Christian followers were even more direct. Christian nationalist firebrand Charlie Kirk saw in Trump’s victory the “Grace of God.” And Trump’s former spiritual advisor Paula White-Cain said of Trump, ““I declare tonight that your victory is found in Jesus Christ! Rest in Him – He has you, in the name of Jesus!”

Among the less zealous right-wing commentary, there was a tendency to exaggerate the significance of Trump’s victory. Consider, the smug conclusion reached by Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal, who claimed that Trump’s victory meant that “America, after its long journey through the 2010’s and 20’s, is becoming more conservative again.” 

On the other side, Trump’s victory brought forth lots of dire doomsaying. In The New Republic a column by Edith Olmsted proclaimed, “Americans just elected a fascist to the White House.” Another column by Ray Marcano said democracy “died on Nov. 6, 2024. It was 248 years old.” 

Pundits and politicians are often loose with their language. Everyone can be tempted by hyperbole. But it behooves us to be more careful and precise, and to avoid the Trumpian trumpet.

I’ll leave an extended critique of the theological bluster for another column (and my forthcoming book on Christian nationalism). But suffice it to say that the American Constitution is a secular document whose First Amendment prevents the establishment of anything like Christian nationalism. I might add that God must work in quite mysterious ways to have hand-picked someone like Trump as an instrument of His will.

Now let’s think critically about the hyperbole of the secular press. Consider Peggy Noonan’s claim about the triumph of conservatism. To say that Trump’s election is a conservative victory requires lots of qualification. Conservatives like Mike Pence  and other never-Trumpers refused to endorse Trump, whose lack of moral fiber and indifference to truth is far from conservative.

The hyperventilating of the left-wing commentariat is also problematic. To say that democracy died as a result of this election is absurd. This election was fair—despite the fact that it was Trump who kept warning of rigged elections and who threatened the existence of democracy when he disputed the 2020 election. His victory in 2024 was a democratic result.

I understand the fear that Trump will undermine this system. He certainly challenged our democracy in 2020. He was wrong then. But so far, the electoral system continues to work. Trump left office then. He returned now through a legitimate process. We ought to have faith that this system will continue to operate in the future. Trump has made threats that may undermine the Constitution. The Supreme Court has offered a broad kind of immunity that might facilitate wrongdoing. And Trump will most likely prevent further investigation into his first administration. This is dispiriting. And we should remain vigilant. But democracy ain’t dead yet. 

Left-wingers also ought to be cautious in invoking words like tyranny or fascism—and the idea of “resistance” to Trump 2.0. In a post-election column Robert Reich called for “peaceful and nonviolent” resistance to Trump. He said, “We the people will resist tyranny.” And, “We will resist Donald Trump’s tyranny.”

In my book on Trump and tyranny I argued for caution with the T-word. Trump was at most a would-be tyrant with a flawed personality. But he was (and is) constrained by our Constitutional system from consolidating power into full-fledged tyranny. 

These Constitutional brakes may be wearing thin. But the system worked to prevent Trump 1.0 from subverting democracy. I agree when Reich calls for a peaceful and nonviolent response to the threat of tyranny. But it would better to describe this simply as adherence to the Constitution and its anti-tyrannical fundamentals. The separation of powers was designed to resist tyranny. This system should be embraced and strengthened. But we should be careful with loose talk about tyranny and resistance, lest our thinking become less peaceful and more extreme.

Which brings me to the F-word. During the 2024 campaign each side accused the other of fascism. The term has become a catch-all pejorative divorced from its original significance. Fascism is an authoritarian political movement that desecrates fundamental liberties in the name of ethnic-nationalist ideology. It is militaristic and state-centered. And it is dependent upon fanatical true-believers and ideologues.

It is true that Trump called his opponents (including the press), enemies of the people and that he hinted at violence and threatened his enemies with revenge. That essay in The New Republic that said a fascist has been elected to the White House lists a long litany of Trump’s dangerously transgressive language. There may be some MAGA true believers who want to see Trump embrace violent ideas that even he described as “dark.” And some Christian nationalists do in fact dream of overthrowing our secular system.

But I doubt that the majority of the Americans who voted for Trump are fascists who would support a Trump regime that tore up the Constitution, fomented violence, and persecuted religious minorities. There are Christian nationalists in our country, as well as sexists, racists, and other sordid characters. There always have been. But it is hyperbolic to suggest that the majority of Trump’s voters would support or tolerate the creation of a MAGA gestapo or the overthrow of the Constitution. 

I could be wrong. History and human nature are unpredictable. In a symposium on my Trump book, a number of my critics suggested I was naïve and overly sanguine in my analysis of the Trump era. With Trump’s second coming, those critics might prove to be right. So let me conclude by saying that while I think we ought to be moderate and careful in our language, we also ought not be naïve. The danger of tyranny is as old as Plato, who pointed out that the moronic masses can end up voting a tyrant into power. This problem is real. No democracy lasts forever. Nothing human does. 

But there is stability in the American system, which was designed to prevent tyranny. It also helps to know that many conservatives agree with liberals that Trump 2.0 will be dangerous. I suspect that those conservatives would also agree with me that the theological fervor around Trump is both blasphemous and un-American.

Democracy is not dead yet. But we must remain vigilant. 

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The rule of law vs. the will of the tyrant

Fresno Bee, Nov. 3, 2024

This week, an arsonist burned ballot boxes in Washington and Oregon. This attack on the vote is, thankfully, a rare occurrence. But it is an ominous warning of threats to our rule-governed democracy.

Our country has established an orderly, rule-governed process for elections. Unfortunately, the rules have been recently disputed, specifically when Donald Trump challenged the idea of a rule-governed process when he refused to admit defeat in 2020. Some Americans are now confused about why the rules even matter to begin with.

Sadly, a number of Americans seem to admire a willingness to break the rules. A Marist poll from April of this year found that 41% of Americans agreed that “America has gotten so far off track that we need a leader who is willing to break some rules to set things right.” Fifty-six percent of Republicans agreed with that sentiment, as did 28% of Democrats.

This result was reiterated by a more recent poll from the Public Religion Research Institute which found that a third of Americans, and 55% of Trump supporters, agreed with the need for a “strong leader willing to break the rules.”

This attitude is Machiavellian and authoritarian. What matters, from this perspective, is gaining power. It does not matter how this is achieved because the end justifies the means.

This cynical idea is morally disastrous. It can be used to justify cheating in the whole of life. The cynic thinks rules are for suckers. And for some arch-cynics, rule-breaking becomes a way of life. What matters to the Machiavellian is outsmarting the saps who follow the rules.

Tyrants think that rules are made by the powerful for their own self-interest. From this standpoint, if you can rewrite the rules to maximize your own power, you’ve won. Not only have you defeated the old system, you’ve also created a new system in your own image.

In response, we ought to reassert the value of a rule-governed world. Rules create stability, structure and order that benefit everyone. Shared allegiance to a system of rules defuses violence and helps establish the possibility of social trust and cooperation. Shared rules allow us to plan for the future and develop common projects.

We rely upon rules to think, communicate, create and build. Grammar, logic, music and mathematics are fundamentally systems of rules. The sentence you are reading now makes sense because it follows the rules of the English language. The rules of language are mostly a matter of custom and habit. They are arbitrary but also important.

Games are like that, too: You can’t make a forward pass beyond the line of scrimmage in football, despite there being no necessary reason for that rule. Someone made it up long ago, and now we just play along. But if you break the rule, you’ll be penalized. And if you refuse to play according to that rule, you are not really playing football.

The legal system is presumably less arbitrary. Some laws appear to reflect the necessary “laws of nature,” as the Declaration of Independence put it, including the self-evident right to life, liberty and happiness. But the legal system also includes conventional and arbitrary elements, including laws about driving, paying taxes and voting.

The electoral college and our winner-takes-all system of voting does not reflect a law of nature. Rather, this system is a social and historical construction. This means that the system can be changed. But there are rules for changing the system, as defined by the Constitution and its amendment process. Burning a ballot box does nothing to change those rules. Nor does refusing to concede an election.

The American system of checks and balances is supposed to prevent a tyrant from corrupting the system of rules. But that system depends upon public trust. Beyond institutional checks and balances, we, the people, need to remind ourselves that rules matter.

The Machiavellians are wrong. The end does not justify the means. And those who are willing to break the rules to gain power are a threat to the very idea of a rule-governed democracy.

Read more at: https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article294831724.html#storylink=cpy

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Democracy and Its Discontents: Trump, Harris, and the need for wisdom

Fresno Bee, October 27, 2024

No matter who wins in November, we must remain committed to wisdom, virtue and truth.

Our democracy is in big trouble. Each side fears the apocalypse, should their party lose the presidential election next month.

Some never-Trumpers, like Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, have stated that, if Trump wins, they will leave the country, given that Trump has repeatedly promised to prosecute or punish his enemies if elected. The other day, a friend of mine said he was hoping to leave the U.S. no matter who wins, since this election shows that our democratic society is doomed.

Republican partisans believe Trump has been unjustly persecuted by the deep state and “the enemy from within,” as Trump puts it. They think Trump’s felonies are fake news, and that a Democratic victory would empower “Marxists, communists and fascists” to ruin the country. They agree with J.D. Vance that “big tech rigged the 2020 election,” and they agree with Trump that the Jan. 6 convicts are really “political prisoners,” “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots.”

The other party warns that all of this represents a fundamental threat to our republic. Vice President Kamala Harris recently said that Trump “admires dictators and is a fascist.” The Democrats complain that Trump stacked the Supreme Court with partisan hacks and warn of authoritarianism, nepotism and corruption should Trump and his cronies return to the White House. At a fundamental level, Democratic partisans find it hard to believe that any sane person could support Trump.

For the partisans, this election represents an existential crisis of historical proportions. But while the partisans fret, a sizable minority of people don’t even bother to vote. According to the Pew Research Center, a third of the voting-eligible population did not vote in 2020; one in three Americans did not participate in the election that gave birth to endless controversy, insurrectionist activity and ongoing angst.

For those unmotivated voters, the past several years — and maybe democracy itself — is a mug’s game, not worth their time. And so we have a fundamental impasse: A third of the people don’t care enough to vote. The rest are polarized and paranoid.

This is no way to run a country.

The philosophical take-away is that there is no perfect social or political system. That’s because human beings are fundamentally flawed — we lack wisdom and virtue. A few people are evil and corrupt, while many others are lazy, ignorant and self-interested. On occasion, a few rare souls rise above the muck. But there are always more sinners than saints.

This recognition of our flawed humanity is what led the Founding Fathers to set up a Constitution with checks and balances and a separation of powers. But this system is frustratingly imperfect, and we should not forget that Americans fought a bloody civil war as we struggled to form “a more perfect union.”

Approximately 2,500 years ago, Plato argued that democracy was among the worst forms of government, as it empowered the moronic mob. His solution was a government ruled by wise and virtuous philosopher-kings. But we know now that monarchic power is as dangerous as mob rule. Which leaves us, frankly, without a perfect solution. As they say, democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.

But democracy can be improved. We do that by educating citizens in virtue and wisdom.

In the ideal world, citizens would vote out of a sense of duty. Voters would use the cool light of reason to assess the merits of each candidate, guided overall by a common sense of truth and value. They would put the common good above their own self-interest, and honor and respect the sincerity and rationality of other voters — even those with whom they disagree. And when the election was over, they would accept the results and remain committed to the fairness of the system and the rule of law.

Alas, we don’t live in an ideal world. A fortunate few may imagine leaving the country as our democracy founders. But in reality, there is no better place to go. Human nature follows us wherever we are. And there is no perfect political system.

The task at hand is to learn from our present crisis, to work incrementally to rebuild a broken society and to remain committed to wisdom, virtue and truth, no matter who wins in November.

Read more at: https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article294485719.html#storylink=cpy

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Hope and Courage in Tough Times

Fresno Bee, October 13, 2024

In these tumultuous times, it is easy to become fearful and lose hope. Wars are spreading. Hurricanes and heat waves show that climate change is happening. The vitriol of the fall election season portends an ugly winter to come. People seem angry, grumpy and mean.

In dark times, it is tempting to abandon hope and retreat in fear to a bunker. But if we do that, things will surely get worse. When the world turns nasty, good people need to remain engaged, hopeful and courageous.

Hope alone is not sufficient. In a recent column in the LA Times, Anna Jane Joyner pointed out that hope is not a strategy for dealing with climate change — hope won’t reduce emissions or heal the atmosphere, nor will it bring back lives lost in wars and hurricanes. Joyner concluded her piece with a quote from climate scientist Kate Marvel: “We need courage, not hope, to face climate change.”

But rather than saying we need courage instead of hope, we should emphasize their interconnection. Courageous people hope that their bravery will pay off. And hope can help us discover the courage to struggle on.

This point is well known. In the 19th century, the British critic Matthew Arnold said: “Wise men everywhere know that we must keep up our courage and our hope.” And Martin Luther King, Jr. explained: “If you lose hope, you lose that vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of all.”

Without courage and other virtues, hope is feckless and naïve — it can imply a kind of passivity. An optimist who relies entirely on hope may do nothing to make the world better. Too much hope can undermine agency and responsible action.

But if an overabundance of hope is problematic, so, too, is hopelessness. Hopeless people also fail to work responsibly for the future. Gloomy pessimists mope about expecting things to fall apart. And since the pessimist does nothing to make things better, the world usually does end up worse.

Virtuous hope lies somewhere in the middle, occurring at the right time, and in the right amount. Some of this depends on the world. Virtuous hope should respond to the facts. False hope denies the facts. False hope can be dangerously disconnected from reality. But the same is true of false despair, which fails to see opportunities for change in the world of facts.

Rather than letting the facts be a drag on the spirit, virtuous and hopeful people imagine what is possible.

Virtues do not occur in isolation. Rather, they are part of a complex web of habits, attitudes and values. In an emergency you need courage, strength and quick wit in addition to hope. In life as a whole, you also need honesty, moderation, compassion, good humor and a sense of justice.

The virtuous duo of courage and hope are essential in business, sports and education. They are crucial for social movements and important for human health and well-being.

In his book, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” Viktor Frankl recounted how, after losing hope, his fellow concentration camp inmates fell sick and died. Frankl explained that “those who know how close the connection is between the state of mind of a man — his courage and hope, or lack of them — and the state of immunity of his body will understand that the sudden loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect.”

Hope and courage don’t come easy in trying times. To develop them is a lifelong task. It helps to learn from role models like King and Frankl, and it to surround yourself with courageous and hopeful people. Remember that, ultimately, your virtue is up to you. The world is responsive to hopeful, courageous and creative energy. This does not mean that hope magically makes things better, but reality can be changed by intelligent and responsible people who apply their agency with courage and hope.

Retreating to the bunker won’t make things better. For things to improve, we must confront the facts courageously, and get to work creating the kind of world we hope for.

Read more at: https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article293773979.html#storylink=cpy