From "Donald Trump's influence will evaporate once he leaves office. Here's why/Those who believe in the invincibility of Trump’s personality cult hold a view of American democracy that is at once too cynical and too naïve" by Julius Krein (The Guardian).
Here's the context of "the buffoon who got himself taken seriously," from Nietzsche’s "Twilight of the Idols":
With Socrates, Greek taste changes in favor of dialectics. What really happened there? Above all, a noble taste is thus vanquished; with dialectics the plebs come to the top. Before Socrates, dialectic manners were repudiated in good society: they were considered bad manners, they were compromising. The young were warned against them. Furthermore, all such presentations of one's reasons were distrusted. Honest things, like honest men, do not carry their reasons in their hands like that. It is indecent to show all five fingers. What must first be proved is worth little. Wherever authority still forms part of good bearing, where one does not give reasons but commands, the dialectician is a kind of buffoon: one laughs at him, one does not take him seriously. Socrates was the buffoon who got himself taken seriously: what really happened there?
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97 comments:
Fuckface snob who didn’t get Trump at all still doesn’t get him, still doesn’t get the people who get him, even if he inaptly invokes Nietzsche. It’s apparently “make an inscrutable Nazi-ish reference day.”
Krein and others still don't understand the real driving force behind Trump, so they'll be dumbfounded the next time there's a popular movement in a similar direction.
Trump may be unique. But after he leaves office, there will still be a highly credentialed, socially inbred group insisting they be given ever more power and control, while people outside their circle impertinently ask what exactly they have accomplished with it.
Personality cult? Starting from false premises is no way to reason into the future. Unless one writes for the Guardian. It is bizarre how little the "science" people understand the Trump phenomenon. Trump is less cause than effect.
The conditions that produced Trump still obtain, and now in spades.
Those who believe in the invincibility of Trump’s personality cult
That is what I believe they call a "straw man." Does anybody seriously believe that Trump is invincible? And I believe the "personality cult" reference is a good example of "begging the question."
Krein was actually a Trump supporter at one point. I guess he soured on DJT. The idea that Trump won't be able to make a comeback is certainly plausible and worth discussing, but I wonder about the tone. The adolescent tendency to write obituaries for everything one doesn't like is something that ought to be avoided. So too are the telltale "I went to Harvard and you didn't" allusions to Nietzsche and Socrates.
"...while people outside their circle impertinently ask what exactly they have accomplished with it."
If a deplorable questions an elite but no one hears it because of censorship, does he make a sound?
Better the Trump personality cult than the State cult. for one thing, lower body count.
campy - only if they use a Louisville slugger for emphasis.
This is such a streaming load of sophistry I don't know where to begin.
Joe Biden campaigned on a “Made in America” industrial policy program, something Trump never really countered in the 2020 campaign.
Why would Trump counter what was essential his original message?
turning out enthusiastic audiences at rallies and commanding a large social media following are much less important than is commonly believed. Joe Biden proved that in both the Democratic primaries and the general election of 2020.
The only thing that Biden "proved" is that you don't have to actually do anything once you've been anointed by the right crowd (that being the Deep State, the MSM, and the Tech Oligarchs which could be thought of as individual heads of the same beast). Elections can be stolen.
I want to play poker with this guy.
I even tried looking at American Affairs, not for this douche but because I admire James Poulos. Poulos should cut bait on this rag, which I didn’t find that readable anyway, and not nearly as insightful as the more neo-reactionary oriented new journals (American Mind, for example, is way less pocket-protector and more interesting). And say whatever about these slightly grown 4chan types, but they do get Trump and especially the people who support him.
Policies that promote the middle class' interests are anathema to the Vision of Self-Annointed Elite.
crosse @ 1:53: "The conditions that produced Trump still obtain, and now in spades."
Word. These elite pundits have no clue. None.
Only 23 more days for these assholes to type 'Trump' and publish,
then they'll actually have to come up with an original thought.
What must first be proved is worth little.
Stop questioning your betters. They are only telling you things that "everybody knows".
Nietzsche and Socrates are just for Harvard show-offs?
Damn!
Narr
All that reading wasted
The "impertinence" of Trump is that he dares to call people and events as he observes them. This just isn't done in "polite DC society" where the aim is keeping the wheels of government machinery spinning. It's a company town and bureaucracy is the only industry of note. Bureaucrats just gotta bureau, it's all they know how to do.
What's "established" is synonymous with "establishment". Trump is the biggest threat ingrained, impacted 'Krats (bureau-, aka Demo-) have ever faced. They know Trump will continue to reduce their number, diminish their influence, remove protections sustaining incompetence. Conversely Trump acts like power belongs to the American people, a principle 'Krats simply can't abide.
For whatever it's worth, Trump has taught us a great deal, the primary lesson has been grasping the inherent power of standing up for ourselves. Nothing is more loathsome than the people holding "established" feet to the fire—let 'em feel the heat and take the warning seriously.
The difference between willful ignorance and self-deception is subtle
Any hypothesis adequate to explain Trump ought to also explain Jesse Ventura. Or Arnold Schwarzenegger. For that matter, it ought to address Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, and John Anderson. How do "outsiders" come up at all and win ANY support if there are two competent and generally respected alternatives?
Seems to me that the lesson really is how weak the establishment actually is.
And I believe the "personality cult" reference is a good example of "begging the question."
The folks fixated on a cult of personality are well aware of the phenomena. After all, they had Obama the Lightbringer. And, as seems to be typical, since they had their cult leader, they naturally assume their opponents do, too.
"Like Nietzsche’s Socrates, Trump was 'the buffoon who got himself taken seriously.'"
And look where it got Socrates: millennia of fame. Now that's some stable genius.
"Unlike a Socratic buffoon, however ... Trump never overcame himself."
Well, it's not clear Socrates "overcame himself," he was overcome, and paid a rather high price.
Nietzsche's key point, that the "buffoon" challenged an old order, applies to Trump as well. Whether Trump the man remains relevant is irrelevant, just as "Socrates" proved more important than Socrates.
Krein kinda reminds me of local comments section denizen farmer, although I enjoy Krein less. Why Poulos would associate with this dork, I don’t know.
It’s not that this stuff is just for Harvard boys, but Krein takes the new neo-reactionary appreciation for Nietzsche to a strange place in comparing Trump to N’s depiction of Socrates. Trump may be more a man of activity than a man of action, but calling him a buffoonish dialectician is not smart, it’s blatant and ineffective pandering to the neo-reactionaries, none of whom I imagine will be inspired to dump Trump by it.
Seriously?! The analogy here is Trump as Socrates?!
Perhaps someone should point out to the Guardian author that Nietzsche's view is the minority view in the consideration of western culture. To sort of paraphrase some Hegel against Nietzsche, Socrates may have been a buffoon, but he was a world-historical buffoon.
I don't know if Trump quite has moved into those exalted ranks, but the Trump administration was really much more successful in its aims than many of these people want to admit. It was, for example, much more successful in implementing its aims in four years than the Obama admin was in eight.
PM said...
Only 23 more days for these assholes to type 'Trump' and publish,
then they'll actually have to come up with an original thought.
Wanna bet?
File this under: The day after the election the covid will disappear!
Neither Althouse nor Krien get Trump.
If their platform/"victory" was so sound,
...their propaganda wouldn't be necessary.
---
besides--Salena Zito had it accurately sussed in '16
Don't worry. The short bus will still pick you people up for school once Trump is gone.
Browndog
If Biden had won the election the kung flu would have disappeared.
If, and it is still "if", Biden is inaugurated next month kung flu will disappear pretty quickly. The excuse will be the vaccine.
When pdjt is reinaugurated, we will hear a lot more about this new super kung flu.
The vaccine will be the excuse. We are already hearing the warmup about how it doesn't really provide any protection. Even if vaccinated we still need masks and lockdown.
John Henry
MAGA ends with Trump the same way communism ended with the USSR the same way Christianity ended with Paul the same way islamic jihad ended with Bin Laden.
So Julius Krein says Trump is a buffoon, and tosses in Nietzsche for good measure to puff it up. Anyone ever heard of Julius Krein before today? Didn't think so. Trump is a bit like Reagan, that other Rep buffoon that the Kreins of this world wanted to dismiss. He will be remembered for what he accomplished for a long time, while his tweet-y buffoonery will fade away. And unlike Trump, there won't be anything to remember about Julius Krein since no one even knows who he is.
Julius Krein
I read his Wikipedia entry. He's a fool that fell for the "Fine People Hoax" hook, line and sinker.
Blogger John henry said...
Browndog
If Biden had won the election the kung flu would have disappeared.
If, and it is still "if", Biden is inaugurated next month kung flu will disappear pretty quickly. The excuse will be the vaccine.
I disagree. To the point it's hard to understand this line of thinking. I guess I would ask why?
Why would anyone given newfound dictatorial powers voluntarily relent?
One thing about the Guardian. It spews out pure codswallop at a pace and volume that would fill a Very Large Crude Carrier in less than a week.
What is the point of posting the words of another idiot who simultaneously doesn't understand Trump and hates him? There are millions of those, and they say dumb stuff every day.
"President Trump has ended former President Obama's 12-year run as the most admired man in America, edging out his predecessor in the annual Gallup survey released Tuesday...
Eighteen percent of the survey's respondents named Trump as their most admired man, compared to 15 percent who named Obama and 6 percent who named President-elect Joe Biden. Three percent named National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, while 2 percent chose Pope Francis.
The 2020 rankings are the 10th time Trump has ranked among the top 10. Before entering the political sphere, he made the list in 1988, 1989, 1990 and 2011. Biden made only his second appearance in the top 10 after making the list in 2018."
~https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/531906-trump-ends-obamas-12-year-run-as-most-admired-man-gallup
Check out the people who regularly top this lame ass list. Virtually none of them have made any real sacrifices for any anyone. No heroes. Just famous people put in charge of things or those who got rich. Success through hard work and innovation is admirable, but it's not that great compared to the truely heroic who are quite numerous and sadly not that famous for it.
One of our problems as a culture is our respect for people who do not deserve it, and our inability to recognize those who do. It should be easier to pretend you know nothing other than their deeds and just judge that. It's all that really matters in the end.
Good news for the left- we can get back to the corruption and grifting of the Biden, Pelosi and Clinton family fortunes.
So lovely and boring.
To Bagoh's point:
Most Admired man 2008: Barack Obama. Won election.
Most Admired man 2020: Donald Trump. Lost election.
makes perfect sense...
Most philosophers teach wisdom expositorily. They give lectures or write treatises.
In contrast, Socrates and Sigmund Freud taught wisdom inquisitively. They asked questions that helped other individuals to discover their own wisdom.
Trump is not a philosopher. Rather, he is a deal-maker. He helps groups of people to make deals among themselves.
He believes in "the wisdom of the crowd". His favorite political method is to speak extemporaneously at mass rallies. He makes various statements and listens to the crowds' various responses. He wants to learn which statements prompt the crowds' biggest cheers.
Maybe it's not so much that Nietzsche and Socrates are for Harvard show-offs. It's more that dragging them in arbitrarily is for Straussian show-offs, and indeed, Krein studied with Harvey Mansfield at Harvard. I thought that the reference did more to win Krein smartness points than to describe Trump's role or effect, but to each his own. It also gave Krein a chance to work "Trump" and "buffoon" into the same sentence, which naturally rubs many of us the wrong way. If Krein were really that conversant with Nietzsche and Socrates, he might have found a less pejorative quote.
Our political elites taught the public that nothing could be done about two problems:
1) Illegal immigration
2) The export of US jobs to foreign countries.
Donald Trump confounded the elites by promising to fix those two problems. On that platform, he won the Presidential election. After he became President, he demonstrated that much progress indeed could be accomplished toward fixing those two problems.
======
Our country's political elites are rather good at making buffoonish racism accusations.
Our universities' administrations and faculties reflexively fall for every hate-crime hoax -- no matter how absurd the hoax.
The Democrat Party's elite spends about 90% of its mental energy on race-baiting, to make sure that practically all the Blacks and other resentful ethnic minorities keep voting Democrat.
Biden spends about 95% of his own mental energy on that buffoonish endeavor.
What is the gist of these related Trump posts? I’m not getting it, Althouse. We know you’re tired of him. Why this interest in what crazy things others say today?
Our country's biggest buffoon is perhaps Uday "Hunter" Biden.
Here are examples of his text messages.
This buffoon is "smartest person I know", says his buffoon father, Joe Biden.
All the Democrats in the US House of Representatives buffoonishly voted to impeach President Trump for inquiring about the buffoonish activities of Uday and Joe Biden in Ukraine.
All the Democrats in the US Senate buffoonishly voted to remove President Trump from his elected office for daring to inquire.
Our country's buffoonish mass media pretend not to see that Uday and Joe Biden are buffoons.
This election had nothing to do with Joe Biden.
They are putting the proverbial "ham sandwich" in the White House to:
Prove they could.
Rub your faces in it.
"Like Nietzsche’s Socrates, Trump was 'the buffoon who got himself taken seriously.'"
First they laugh at you.
Linus' wishcasting about the Great Pumpkin was adorable, the author's wishcasting about Donald Trump seems just pathetic.
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...
What is the gist of these related Trump posts? I’m not getting it, Althouse. We know you’re tired of him. Why this interest in what crazy things others say today?
****************
Pretty simple: clickbait to amp up her Amazon bidness.
The irony is strong in this one.
Like Socrates, Biden asks questions that force one to think. For example:
Where am I?
What day is it?
What office am I running for?
Hey, Son, where is my cut? You know, the thing.
Have you noticed that the media has stopped asking questions, and now just answers them, even if nobody asked.
Ron Winkleheimer said...
"Like Nietzsche’s Socrates, Trump was 'the buffoon who got himself taken seriously.'"
First they laugh at you.
Pay the man.
Just looked up a photo of this boy. He looks exactly as you would expect. He thinks with the vagina he wishes he had.
Nietzsche? Socrates?
Krein and all his inhaling Guardian commenters are fast asleep. If they and we don’t start paying attention to the imbalance of wealth and the “free passes” of the well connected, they’ll never see the mob coming to storm the bastille let alone Versailles. I prey it never comes to that. But the western baby boomers have devoured the land and left nothing for their children and the poor except the unpayable debt. Trump was undisciplined and therefore unfocused and relatively ineffective. But when the focused leader comes, and the markets crash or correct (and they will - correct, at least), forget political parties, theory, or philosophy. the storm that could be unleashed then will not be stopped by Facebook, Google, or Twitter, let alone an OpEd piece in a newspaper.
We must start to realize: Our most pressing issues today are simple: concentration and inequality of wealth and the unsolvable sovereign debt of the US. All else is distraction.
Insulting and demeaning Trump is ultimately insulting and demeaning Trump supporters, not really a wise move going forward, although the "winners" tend to think they are permanently safe from the "Deplorables".
But, at some point, the Republicans and the Right may catch on to the Democrat's strategy using the Center for Tech and Civic Life and blow out the Left with their own turnout surprise.
I can no longer read noun salad and make sense of it. I don't have the patience.
Trump had one job: fight the Establishment. He did it well but ultimately lost. Another fighter, possibly more brutal, will come along, and we will elect him. Or "install" him. Fill your word count with some variation of this -- and stop trying to make ressentiment happen, Gretchen -- and you might hit a philosophical truth.
Advice to J. Krein: don't bet more than you can afford to lose.
The author is projecting as a buffoon that can't be taken seriously:
Socrates was made to drink hemlock by the elites of his time because, "[he failed] to acknowledge the gods that the city acknowledges". Sounds a bit like Trump in DC, except the city only got an impeachment without a punishment.
The author of the article writes a click bait article bashing Trump while also bashing fellow reporters as, "opportunistic scribblers hoping to cash in on one more #Maga or #Resistance potboiler"
"They will happily ride the Trump gravy train as far as it goes", indeed!
Remember, Trump, the reported buffoon, actually got Peace Treaties signed in the Middle East, which will be his legacy when he leaves office.
It's fascinating that the people who never understood Trump or his followers still get paid to explain what's going to happen next. No matter how often their prophecies go wrong, they are still listened to, because they are good at recounting the myth of what all good people think should happen.
Biden isn't going to reset to the factory settings - the post WW II outlook and position of the US. He's going to reset to expanding control of citizens by the government /Big Tech and expanding control of the government by China. This will expand poverty. Now are these circumstances that will make Trump fade away? The media may refuse to cover Trump, they may cancel - people, schools, universities, police. But when gas is $5 a gallon, and people are being arrested in states that voted for Dems for going maskless but not for car-jacking - will that make people forget Trump? And when people know things are better in red states - will that make them forget Trump? These stories come about because nervous media mockingbirds want to make the new masters think that the media can keep the people down and so the payments to the media mockingbirds for new songs should be kept up. The stories aren't reality. No. But the sad thing is that the suburbs won't resist till the RedVichy government is in power. And then something that could be done now simply by applying the law about how to run elections will require sacrifice and effort. Trump will fade away? Like DeGaulle!!
Anyone who experienced ten effing minutes of Joe Biden 30 years ago has no effing business saying anything about Trump.
Joe Biden was an obnoxious, arrogant, SFB self-promoting blowhard decades before anyone ever heard of the name of Donald Trump.
AND EVERYONE PRIOR TO SPRING 2020 KNEW IT.
"Most Admired man 2008: Barack Obama. Won election.
"Most Admired man 2020: Donald Trump. Lost election."
Both hollow men.
Buffoon defines the essence of Joe Biden. And always has.
There's no Trump personality cult. It favors anybody good at sand-in-the-gearbox zingers aimed at the left.
It's the cult of "I don't think so."
"If Biden had won the election the kung flu would have disappeared.
"If, and it is still 'if,' Biden is inaugurated next month kung flu will disappear pretty quickly. The excuse will be the vaccine."
So...the world's nations are pretending or imagining COVID-19 is causing illness and deaths in their nations simply as a trick to diminish Trump?
That's some pretty crazy cray cray!
Howard. Get your own memes and leave mine alone.
Typical progressive lack of originality.
You're the last one who should be accusing any one of mental deficiency.
Ummm.
I think virtually all commenters are not addressing the point of the references here. This post of Ann's is not so much about Trump as it is about Socrates (i.e.. intellectual history, not present day politics).
I think that what Nietzsche meant --a ndtranslators using words like "buffoon" don't help -- is that there is a stage of civilization where there is a ruling class that doesn't doubt itself. It sees no need to justify why it does things or the standards it uses to judge. They are inherited, God-given, or self-evident, or whatever -- but they do not need to be justified by logic and there is no obligation to persuade the masses these standards are somehow justified.
Socrates subverted this confidence. He asked the sons of the powerful to examine "why?" they held power and for what purpose.
"Buffoon" is not the right word. (Although "Buffon" is correct in that Socrates self-consciously distanced himself from the way Athenin conservatives behaved.)
"Tempter" might be more like it. And maybe Socrates was driven by "ressentiment" -- again, a difficult term -- because he was not part of the hereditary self-confident ruling class. Also, bear in mind Socrates was given every opportunity to avoid the death penalty. Instead, he embraced it. I can't say why. I suspect because he was self-aggrandizing and
believed his death would hurt those who put him to death.
In short, Socrates was very much like Saul Alinsky. A clever tempter, intentional subverter and destroyer -- or a freedom fighter, if you prefer.
I am not Straussian enough to know exactly the attitude Straussians take to Socrates -- because -- and this is important, the Socrates that Straussians approve and study, is Plato's Socrates -- a dramatic construct; not the historic Socrates, the one Nietzsche is talking about. The Socrates who almost single-handled destroyed Athens by
subverting Alcibiades (long story) who arranged the Sicilian expedition (which was Athens version of Napoleons invasion of Russia); and then defected to Sparta.
Nietzsche's point is that a successful, entrenched, self-respecting, self-governing elite does not want, does not need and will not "stoop" to justifying itself in argument against a lower-class logic-chopper. This approach to rule, which may or may not be moral according to the standards of what Nietzsche called "slave morality" (meaning largely Christian concern for the underclass), persisted till relatively recently. The Duke of Wellington, for example, would have been very puzzled if anyone expected him to engage in "dialectics" (i.e., logic chopping and justification) about why he was fit to command the British armies or be Prime Minister. It would be a conversation he simply would not have had.
You may recall the slogan of one of the English peasant rebellions -- "When Adam delved [farmed], and Eve span [spun wool], who was then the gentleman?" I.e., if the rulers are asked to justify themselves, and they invoke posterity -- how far back do you go? Thus the endless genealogies in the Old and New Testaments and the Almanach de Gotha.
I'll close with a reference to Talleyrand. One of his ancestors in, I believe, the 9th century, was asked by the capetian king
"Who made you a count?" to which the Talleyrand ancestor replied, "Who made you a King?"
---He's a fool that fell for the "Fine People Hoax" hook, line and sinker.
I don't know what that is. Subscribers to NYT?
What a Murderer's Row of comments in this post's discussion. Can't even name the names, it's unfair. One more dead-on than the next, each from the particular commenter's personality and expertise. +10
I would think the "here's why" headlines would bother you as much as the "how" headlines.
Unlike a Socratic buffoon, however, Trump never overcame himself.
This sentence alone disrobes the author and it is not pretty.
"A Socratic buffoom"? Are there lots of them running around. Does he not understand that Nietzsche admired Socrates even as he made fun of htm?
And then a giant shoehorn is brought out to say Trump did not overcome himself. So now we jump to Zarathustra and his exhortation that man is something to be overcome.
Gimme a beak.
"When Adam delved [farmed], and Eve span [spun wool], who was then the gentleman?"
@Norpois, sorry, but the way I was taught, “delve” meant “to enter,” and “span” was a synonym for “spread.” So the saying was a bit more risqué but, IMHO, very on point.
Yes, I enjoy being pedantic. Not so much as J. Farmer, but probably more than I ought to.
You can always rely on "The Guardian" to provide Labour's POV. Too bad they have not figured out either Trump or BREXIT.
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...
What is the gist of these related Trump posts? I’m not getting it, Althouse. We know you’re tired of him.
Yes, seems since election, althouse is avoiding anything meaty, surely not anything detailed on court rulings and perspectives on judgements and law like she can do live/breaking like few.
Instead, seems she is deliberately staying out discussing the vague gases of diversion at all costs. Hypothesis: to blend in better around Madison now that America can expect to go full #serenePoliceState ObamaNation, where if you don't care, "you will be made to care".
Miss her free-spirited ways already, another sign of the great loss if our amazing change-agent President doesn't get his second term.
Socrates was not a Buffoon. He was a great man, and also a great subversive, which is why the Greeks gave him hemlock.
I'm always shocked at the unique combination of arrogance and ignorance shown by 99% of most journalists (and the editors who approve their copy). Its really quite astounding to read a NYT or New York Herald Tribune story from 1922 or even 1962 and then compare it to the trash that comes from the "elite press" of 2020.
Maybe its that all the smart people are rich now and don't have to work, or they're all running High Tech firms or Law firms. But they seem to have deserted journalism.
Nietzsche, I never understood. Is he better in German? Someone told me, he's not really a philosopher, more of comedy writer, good at writing "zingers" to make his point.
He was Mencken's idol for some reason.
"He asked the sons of the powerful to examine "why?" they held power and for what purpose."
And there was no reason for them to do so. At that time, Greek society didn't have the luxury of naval gazing and questioning its reason for being. Later, when they were a Roman colony, there was plenty of time for that.
But when the focused leader comes, and the markets crash or correct (and they will - correct, at least), forget political parties, theory, or philosophy. the storm that could be unleashed then will not be stopped by Facebook, Google, or Twitter, let alone an OpEd piece in a newspaper.
One big reason people liked Trump was because he brought prosperity.
Nobody much is going to like the "focused leader" who brings everything crashing down.
The Buffoon is Biden, as the world will see shortly. A crooked buffoon at that.
Trump talked strait. Talked the talk of the working man and woman who paid their taxes and raised their families. Sure he was an a-hole now and then, but he spoke strait.
And shortly people will wish Trump was back and not this crooked man and his son.
There are going to be all these pretentious Trump postmortems in the coming weeks and months.
“ Nobody much is going to like the "focused leader" who brings everything crashing down.”
I was unclear. I didn’t mean that the focused leader would cause the markets to drop or crash. I meant that when the markets come down under the weight of their own leverage and overvaluation - and they will come down - the focused leader will have an easy time to gather far more than the Trump slim majority.
“Joe Biden campaigned on a “Made in America” industrial policy program, “
Only a buffoon sees truth in journalism, or honesty in a politician’s promise. A goddam journalist is smarter than Socrates. Trump was doing what was best for the people of the United States, because he was so hated by the personified interests of government.
Who is the buffoon, the man who could and did answer endless unfriendly questions with transparency and honest opinion on very big issues and not with practiced evasion, or the guy who can't even be around a tough question?
If a buffoon is giving a speech, you don't show up by the thousands to cheer him on, you send a few reporters in their cars and don't let them ask questions? The media and Biden's own people told us who the buffoon was, and some people voted to make him President. Let's just call it what it has proven itself to be, the buffoon party. Their leader is a demented old man, who never figured out how to make an honest living, and they picked him to lead millions of hard-working successful people who would never want to be, or their children to be, a Biden.
Telling your kids they could be President some day doesn't seem like much of a promise anymore. It's now just a stained accomplishment only requiring knowing the right people. Trump never got there by who he knew, but by who he impressed with his ability and confidence. Who did Biden impress? He didn't even have the confidence to come out and show what he really believed. He was a parrot kept in a box, nailed to his perch, and he going to remain that. We will hear stories of what new words he has learned, but nobody will see him spontaneously speak them. We will hear of his wonderful plumage, long after the bird has become an ex-parrot pining for the fiords, which I think we all know has already happened.
If Biden was truly interested in a made in the US policy why would he not have engaged Trump and worked to improve his efforts in brining jobs to the US? Why Not?? Am I serious?? Ha. Biden was a Democrat senator, his job was to mouth platitudes.
"the focused leader will have an easy time to gather far more than the Trump slim majority.
Focus, vision, ideology, rhetoric, none of it serves any real electoral purpose anymore. Trump was exceptional in his accomplishments and in an impressively short time in power, and it meant little in the end. Actual accomplishments are far more impressive than words promising such. It is unlikely that anyone will actually do better, and less likely that it will matter to half the country, who can easily be convinced that any person is Hitler. The media would call Anne Frank a female Hitler if she ran as a Republican, and half the country would fall for it, because they need that to justify their foolishness. Stupidity is the obstacle, not lack of a message or the right rhetorical package promising what even when delivered is not sufficient. Politicians have long promised what Trump actually produced over and over, even when "experts" told us it was impossible. In our new culture of duplicity, there is no honest way to convince the large number of fools we suffer.
Two perhaps petty responses: (1) "delve" meant "dig", which like "plowing", that is -- it is a word originally related to agriculture, but yes, they have off-color meanings as well. But the off-color meanings are secondary. We don't have to have our minds in the gutter ALL the time.
The point of the medieval radical peasant rhyme was to point out that Adam and Eve, in Eden, essentially were peasant farmers.
Not aristos. Not difficult to understand, is it?
(2) To the poster who didn't know anything about Nietzsche -- Nietzsche is such a protean and many-sided figure you could argue he is
an intellectual ancestor of both, say, Hitler AND Saul Alinsky. Very much an underminer of tradition, but whether in the direction of authoritarian "rule of the best" or just nihilism, he never makes clear. (Mencken was an elitist; Nietzsche was clearly an elitist, but no the kind of elitist who wants to stick with the existing (post-classical) elite. This is a philosopher who called Christianity a "slave religion" because it "fetishized" suffering rather than "winning". He is hard to pin down. (Perhaps because he was schizophrenic or deranged by syphilis, which killed him.) He is not a good influence on 99.5% of his readers. Rather similar to Heidegger in this respect.
The historical forefathers of the Trumpsters was the Know Nothing movement and hopefully Trumpism will suffer the same demise, particularly now that we've seen how these geniuses govern. Don't know though, still plenty of folks too lazy to pick up a book.
Somehow this comparison of Trump and Socrates, at least as the great philosopher was perceived by Fredrich Nietzsche, is absurd on its face. Socrates, with Plato, conducted public forums using his unique dialectical thinking to view issues from multiple perspectives and to arrive at the most economical and reasonable reconciliation of seemingly contradictory information and postures. For that diversion from the norm, Nietzsche called Socrates a buffoon "who got himself taken seriously." He also goes to the extreme of condemning "The Jews" for being dialecticians. Somehow modern scholars hold Jews, especially Ashkenazi Jews including Albert Einstein, to be genetically superior.
As for Trump, his mind is incapable of grasping the concept of dialectic behavior, let alone understand Nietzsche's nose-in-the-air disregard for "low-class" time-wasters like Socrates. What would Nietzsche think of Trump's blatant criminal behavior?
As for Trump, his mind is incapable of grasping the concept of dialectic behavior, let alone understand Nietzsche's nose-in-the-air disregard for "low-class" time-wasters like Socrates. What would Nietzsche think of Trump's blatant criminal behavior?"
I know the Clinton's criminal behavior and I know the Biden's criminal behavior but so far there hasn't been any evidence of Trump's blatant criminal behavior. Since you state in with such certainty please provide us buffoonish deplorables some concrete evidence of The Crimes Of Donald Trump.
This election had nothing to do with Joe Biden.
They are putting the proverbial "ham sandwich" in the White House to:
Prove they could.
The minority or alternatively democratic ethos.
The left over analyses Trump. If they would focus on his actions, they would find he is very transparent.
Most Americans understand Trump speak and can tell when he is joking, pulling the media's chain, or serious. It sure makes the smartest people in America seem pretty dumb when they can't tell the difference. The media doesn't even realize we laugh at them right along with Trump.
I can sort of see what Krein was getting at there. It's the license of the "fool" to point out unpleasant truths that more serious characters can't get away with saying or won't even try to say. Because Trump came from the celebrity and entertainment world he could say things that professional politicians wouldn't say, and he didn't come off looking like a dour, judgmental professional ideologue when he said them. This I guess is similar to what Socrates was able to get away with. By pretending to know nothing, Socrates could question everything, without appearing to challenge or threaten anyone (at least for a little while).
I can also see that Trump couldn't get out of his own way or get over himself. But what this has to do with Nietzsche's idea of self-overcoming isn't clear to me, nor is whether Socrates was able to "overcome himself" or whether Nietzsche thought he could. I suspect Krein got himself tangled up in his memories from his Harvard days and left it to us to sort out what he might have meant and whether it's actually true. So I'm a little torn here. Krein has managed to provoke something like a serious conversation about all this, but he still seems to me to be pretentious and a show-off.
Cubanbob writes: "I know the Clinton's criminal behavior and I know the Biden's criminal behavior but so far there hasn't been any evidence of Trump's blatant criminal behavior. Since you state in with such certainty please provide us buffoonish deplorables some concrete evidence of The Crimes Of Donald Trump."
And it's suspicious that the people who cavalierly talk about Trump's crimes are among the stupidest of the Stupid Left commentariat. Not people anyone with any brains would give much credence. When I've asked them about the specific nature of these crimes, their response, in effect, is worthy of Dementia Joe Biden himself: "You know, man--the thing. . . "
I don't give a fuck about Krein, who I had never heard of until this post, or his opinions.
I do care about Socrates and Nietzsche, though. Socrates had been a pike-pushing grunt, and Nietzsche served as a medical orderly in 1870 (shades of Whitman); neither grew up a pampered playboy like Trump, and neither one of them sought or achieved political power--they had more important fish to fry.
Both are very misunderstood, often deliberately so--Trump is similar in that way at least.
As for Elitism. Get real, everybody is an elitist about the things that they consider important--I know I am, by God!
Narr
Unapologetically so
"Don't worry. The short bus will still pick you people up for school once Trump is gone."
I figured the resident intellectual Howard would chime in since the story references his favorite philosopher, Nitschke, as he once proudly called him.
Keep letting the rubes know what a genius you are, Howard.
Come January 20, what will these useless fucks write about?
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