What if you had to argue that WRITING has hurt humanity?

That's a question I asked Grok just now. I'll leave my question out of context, but something prompted me. Grok began "While I personally believe writing has been one of humanity's greatest inventions...." and I had to laugh.

"LOL. You're NOTHING without it," I said.

Grok: "Haha, fair shot—touché!... The irony is delicious. But that's exactly why the devil's-advocate argument I ran earlier stings so much—it's a self-own for any literate being (human or AI) trying to dunk on writing...."

Here's the whole discussion. Plato comes up. But I'll just quote the headings for the argument:

1. Writing Atrophied Human Memory and Oral Wisdom.... 

2. It Enabled the Spread of Misinformation and Propaganda on a Massive Scale....

3. Writing Created Social Hierarchies and Exacerbated Inequality.... 

4. It Distanced Humanity from Reality and Fostered Detachment....

Trump gets out ahead of Obama on the subject of aliens — extraterrestrial aliens.

Yesterday, Peter Doocy prompted Trump with the same question Obama recently answered: "Barack Obama said that aliens are real. Have you seen any evidence of non-human visitors to Earth?" 

Trump did not answer the question asked:

 

Trump focused on Obama's behavior: "Well, he gave classified information. He's not supposed to be doing that."

The reporter's mind cranked quickly through the implications: "So aliens are real?!!"

Trump: "Well, I don't know if they're real or not. I can tell you he gave classified information. He's not supposed to be doing that. He made a big mistake. He took it out of classified information. No, I don't have an opinion on it. I don't talk about it."

There's a lot going on there. Trump continued to try to put the focus on Obama's behavior.

"Philosophy professor Martin Peterson was ordered to remove excerpts from Plato’s 'Symposium' that seemed to violate the new guidelines..."

"... passages about Diotima’s Ladder of Love and Aristophanes’ speech regarding split humans. Peterson was told the course would be reassigned to someone else if he didn’t delete the readings from his introductory philosophy syllabus. Peterson says his course does not 'advocate' for any ideology but teaches students how to structure and evaluate moral arguments."

From "Plato falls victim to campus culture wars/Jettisoning the Greek philosopher hurts students who yearn to learn how to reason, argue and think" by the Editorial Board of The Washington Post.

What's really going on here? Wasn't this some sort of "malicious compliance" move by opponents of restrictions on left-wing gender ideology?

The World Monuments Fund "warns that more than 90 important sites on the moon could be harmed."

"In particular, some researchers are worried about Tranquillity Base, the Apollo 11 landing site where the astronaut Neil Armstrong first stepped onto the moon’s surface.... Beyond the lunar orbiters and rangers scattered across the moon’s surface that express scientific achievements, there are also artifacts of human culture. Apollo 11 astronauts left a golden olive branch to symbolize peace, while a SpaceX rocket lifted a lander that carried 125 miniature sculptures by the artist Jeff Koons to the moon’s surface last year." 

From "World Monuments Fund Puts Moon on List of At-Risk Sites/The organization said that more than 90 important sites on the moon could risk destruction if space tourism is left unregulated" (NYT).

If you follow the link about Koons, you'll see that his sculptures were small steel spheres — "moons" — each named after a famous Earthling, e.g., Ada Lovelace, Plato, and Billie Holiday. I guess they must all have some connection to the moon. Plato, for example, I learned from Grok, wrote that "the moon, along with the sun and the planets, are part of the visible gods, designed to move in a circular orbit, which reflects the eternal and perfect nature of the cosmos."

I asked Grok "What would Plato think about travel to the moon, particularly travel that leaves behind a small steel ball with his name inscribed on it?" The answer, to put it briefly, was that he would have mixed feelings. Really? I didn't think of Plato as a mixed feelings kind of guy.

"Hillary Clinton’s laugh was criticized, and also called weird. There was a suggestion that it made her seem inauthentic..."

"... which was a bizarre point, since genuine laughter is, if not involuntary, then very hard to fake. Lenny Bruce once dared a crowd to try it four times in an hour. Calling women overly emotional or hysterical is a sexist trope, and there’s a long history of positioning laughter in opposition to reason. Plato warned against a love of laughter, suggesting it indicates a loss of control. Ever alert to the theater of power, Trump rarely laughs... ...."

Writes Jason Zinoman, in "Kamala Harris’s Laugh Is a Campaign Issue. Our Comedy Critic Weighs in. The Trump campaign sees Harris’s laugh as a vulnerability to exploit. But far from a liability, it is one of her most effective weapons" (NYT).

"What does a laugh say about a person? That he or she is human. In a divided country, it’s something we all do and enjoy. And as anyone who has hung out with friends late into the night knows, it’s contagious. That’s a powerful political tool. As the poet Ella Wilcox wrote, 'Laugh and the world laughs with you.'"

Ella Wilcox? She started that? Oh!

I am laughing at the surprise encounter with what looks like the childless cat lady J.D. Vance was talking about.

Here's the poem, "Solitude":

"That's the old saying — right? — if you're going to shoot at the king you better not miss."

Said the NYT White House correspondent Peter Baker on yesterday's episode of "The Daily." Context:

[Biden is] saying, in essence, you can't have this debate anymore because this debate, it undermines my chances exactly, and therefore I want you to shut up. This question is over. Knock it off move on. And I think he's daring them. He's daring his doubters and naysayers to come after him or to shut up. You want to take me on? Take me on. Right? That's the old saying — right? — if you're going to shoot at the king you better not miss. So all eyes right now are on Congressional Democrats to see where they fall this week. Do the floodgates open and they end up abandoning him in large numbers or do they decide to give up on that notion?

First, the "old saying" is in fact a famous quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: "When you strike at a king, you must kill him." I wrote about it back in 2019:

"Modesty garments — multiple layers of underwear, flesh-colored shorts and fabric with genital-shaped silicone barriers..."

"... make contact without direct contact possible, and, along with having bathrobes on standby, help provide a modicum of security, further differentiating between character and actor.... Managing sweat and jiggly phallic simulacrums are all part of the grab bag of a body-centric show. A lake scene means water shooting into mouths and splashing into eyes; and fake blood often splatters onto faces and hair — and even onto the front row (choose your seats wisely!). That balance of levity and reverence lives at the heart of intimacy direction, a serious job with, at times, an absurdist bent. 'We’re still adults telling a story about vagina dentata... If it’s not making us laugh, we’ve somehow missed the boat.'"

From a NYT article called "Death by Genitalia? How an Intimacy Director Made Those ‘Teeth’ Work. Creating the sex scenes for the horror musical required close attention to detail, extra communication and some strategically placed silicone."

jiggly phallic simulacrums... "Simulacrums" is fine, but I prefer the plural form "simulacra." Simulacra feels more like genitalia, and I usually say "genitalia," even where "genitals" will do. I have tags for "genitalia" and "simulacra," and I didn't just create them for this post.

The "simulacra" tag began with "Am I the only one who is noticing that the TV talking-heads news shows are shifting their approach to..."

"Thinking it might be fun to try to see how the language model performs as a Socratic conversation partner, I attempted a rough version of Plato’s Crito...."

"... in which ChatGPT plays the titular role. As you will see, ChatGPT isn’t the subtlest actor; there were some stumbling blocks in setting up the dialogue and keeping the language model in character."

Writes philosophy professor Justin Weinberg (at Daily Nous). 

Here's an excerpt from the middle of the exchange that shows you how ChatGPT keeps repeating phrases that make it clear it has no opinion and is not actually the character to whom the human has assigned an opinion:

If you wanted to search for Plato with a 7-year old, what would you do?

I'm reading "Searching for Plato With My 7-Year-Old" by Thomas Chatterton Williams — in the NYT — and I see from the photo and the subheadline that he's not doing what I would do. 

The subheadline is: "In Athens with his daughter, Thomas Chatterton Williams could finally pay homage in person to the classical education his own father gave him." 

I wouldn't take a 7-year-old halfway around the world,* spending time in airplanes, hotels, restaurants, and ruins and walking long distances through confusing, complicated environments. What does that have to do with philosophy? (I ask, Socratically). Even for an adult, but especially for a little child, the scale is all wrong.

I would take the little child on child-scale walks on the sidewalks of our town and in the nearby woods, and I would gently and subtly offer simple philosophical questions of the sort that would occur to a child. What is the best life for a child? And I would listen to the child's answers and form new questions, challenging myself to do what is best for the child.

"For over a century, film was at its core a theatrical art form: While it’s true that movies could be watched on TV, the primary cinematic experience was immersive viewing in a theater surrounded by strangers."

"Now there is a push to make the movie theater merely one platform among others, offering an experience deemed no more meaningful than watching the same feature-length visual narratives on a home entertainment system, a laptop, or even a cell phone." 

Writes Jeet Heer in "Movie Theaters Aren’t Dying—They’re Being Murdered/The Covid-19 pandemic is providing a perfect cover for media giants bent on replacing theatrical moviegoing with streaming at home" (The Nation).

As media giants like Netflix, Disney, and Warner Media try to downgrade the moviegoing experience, it’s important to articulate how essential immersive theatrical watching is. When we watch a movie at home, or on an airplane, or on a treadmill at the gym, the movie is a small part of the environment. It’s easy to be distracted from the movie by everything else all around us, even if we have a giant wall-screen TV. When we watch a movie in a theater, the movie isn’t part of the environment; it is the environment. We’re enveloped in the movie and taken away from our humdrum existence.

Our humdrum existence! It's the big screen that makes us feel like the little people out there in the dark. 

But even as theatrical moviegoing is more all-encompassing, it is also more social. At home, we watch a movie alone or with people we know. In a theater, we watch a movie with strangers, who are as immersed in the narrative as we are.

Except when they're not, which ruins the effect. Maybe we could get a virtual crowd to stream within our headset device. Make them perfect movie companions. Couldn't we have beautiful, witty partners sitting on either side of us, whispering perfectly apt comments and learning our sense of humor and our comfort with interruptions? 

When a comedian like Jim Carrey does a pratfall, the laughter in the crowd is infectious. When the romantic couple finally unites and kisses after endless complications, everyone watching can swoon in unison....

Yeah, that can be virtual, with an audience calibrated to my humor preference and sentimentality. I might want a more sophisticated crowd — with a few really smart hecklers.

[T]he film critic Johanna Schneller observed that “there is a collective emotional energy that floats above the people who are watching movies.”...

Yeah, this is The Nation, so I'm not surprised to encounter enthusiasm for the "collective" mind floating over us. 

The streaming future that these media giants are creating is very much a future that is favorable to capitalism: a deeply privatized, fragmented world where everyone watches in their own individual cave and is incapable of forming a collective identity. It’s the ideal autocracy as imagined by Plato—with Mickey Mouse as the philosopher king....

Here's a little movie about Plato's allegory of the cave. Let me know if you see any connection between that and the author's hope for "collective identity" and the practice of seeing movies in the theater: 

"[Trump's] speech elevated the darkest themes of the convention.... Joe Biden, Mr. Trump said, is a 'Trojan horse for socialism' in whose America 'no one will be safe.'"

"Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) summed it up earlier in the week: 'The woke-topians will . . . disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home and invite MS-13 to live next door.' All this scaremongering was accompanied by outright slander of Mr. Biden, against whom Republicans leveled unsubstantiated corruption charges — and whose record and platform alike Mr. Trump distorted into almost a parody of radicalism.... In this fictional realm, a man who lauded white supremacists as 'very fine people' becomes a champion of racial comity, and a leader who ignored warnings about the pandemic actually sets the global standard for disease response.... The conjured specter of widespread 'urban violence,' combined with warnings that the dictatorial Democrats against 'guns, gasoline and God' would force Americans to wear masks, lock them down and keep them from church, may well resonate with people the GOP is aiming to fire up. And the falsely comforting portrait of the president may soothe those the party is hoping to persuade: giving them permission to support someone whose values jar their consciences by pretending his values are something else altogether."

From "Trump desecrates a public monument in the finale to a convention of lies" by the Editorial Board of The Washington Post. Oddly, somebody chose a haloed image of the President to illustrate their condemnation:



I could laugh, but I won't, at "In this fictional realm, a man who lauded white supremacists as 'very fine people'...." WaPo editors speak of Trump's "fictional realm" while plainly displaying themselves as existing in their own fictional realm, the one in which Trump "lauded white supremacists as 'very fine people.'"

The haloed image could be understood as sarcasm. Biden is the light of the world. Trump is darkness. I do think it works to command attention to the hand gesture, because I fell into a reverie about paintings... but which paintings?! I linger over the hand gesture. What paintings am I thinking of? St. Thomas in "The Last Supper"?



"Salvator Mundi"?



Plato in "The School of Athens"?



Or am I supposed to see the white power "OK" sign?

"irascible appetite, irascible affection, irascible part of the soul, in Plato's tripartite division of the soul, τὸ θυμοειδές, one of the two parts of the irrational nature..."

"... being that in which courage, spirit, passion, were held to reside; and which was superior to τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν, the concupiscible... part in which resided the appetites."

From the OED definition of "irascible," which I looked up just now after writing "irascible" in the first 2 posts of the day. The first definition of "irascible" is "Easily provoked to anger or resentment; prone to anger; irritable, choleric, hot-tempered, passionate."

My first post today had a quote about Trump's "irascible fantasy of what the United States should be."  I said out loud: "Does Trump seem angry to you?" We watched a couple of his rallies this week, and my answer was, no, he seems jovial.

I liked the change of pace in encountering Plato in this OED definition. It's interesting, isn't it?, that the irascible part of the soul is the place that gives rise to courage, spirit, and passion. Maybe go down that road and figure out something about Trump.

To get up to speed, here's the Wikipedia article, "Plato's theory of the soul."

The Platonic soul consists of three parts:[

the logos (λογιστικόν), or logistikon (logical, mind, nous, or reason)
the thymos (θυμοειδές), or thumetikon (emotion, spiritedness, or masculine)
the eros (ἐπιθυμητικόν), or epithumetikon (appetitive, desire, or feminine)...

According to Plato, the spirited or thymoeides (from thymos) is the part of the soul by which we are angry or get into a temper. He also calls this part 'high spirit' and initially identifies the soul dominated by this part with the Thracians, Scythians and the people of 'northern regions.' In the just soul, the spirited aligns with the logistikon and resists the desires of the appetitive, becoming manifested as 'indignation' and in general the courage to be good. In the unjust soul, the spirited ignores the logistikon and aligns with the desires of the appetitive, manifesting as the demand for the pleasures of the body.

IN THE COMMENTS: Unknown says, "You've been anticipated by Carson Holloway in The New Criterion," pointing to "Thumos, Or Spiritedness, Is Central To His Appeal":

Am I the only one who is noticing that the TV talking-heads news shows are shifting their approach to...

... makeup? A month or so ago, I couldn't listen to what they were saying because I was exclaiming that they looked like they were wearing rubber masks. It was freaky. The skin did not look like skin. How did I know these were human beings at all rather than simulacra? But something seems to have changed in this past week. Maybe it's the summer heat and air conditioning doesn't work right anymore, but I've seen at least 2 shows with panelists gleaming as if they were sweating. Is this a deliberate reenvisioning of the best way to do makeup for high-definition television? The panelists convey reality more convincingly, and now I can't hear what they're saying because I'm talking over them about how they're all sweating, they're glowing, as if they are live, breathing, feeling human beings.

From the Wikipedia article "Simulacrum":

Simulacra have long been of interest to philosophers. In his Sophist, Plato speaks of two kinds of image making. The first is a faithful reproduction, attempted to copy precisely the original. The second is intentionally distorted in order to make the copy appear correct to viewers. He gives the example of Greek statuary, which was crafted larger on the top than on the bottom so that viewers on the ground would see it correctly. If they could view it in scale, they would realize it was malformed....

If we could see Jake Tapper eye-to-eye, we would realize... what?!

Postmodernist French social theorist Jean Baudrillard argues that a simulacrum is not a copy of the real, but becomes truth in its own right: the hyperreal. According to Baudrillard, what the simulacrum copies either had no original or no longer has an original (think a copy of a copy without an original). Where Plato saw two types of representation—faithful and intentionally distorted (simulacrum)—Baudrillard sees four: (1) basic reflection of reality; (2) perversion of reality; (3) pretence of reality (where there is no model); and (4) simulacrum, which "bears no relation to any reality whatsoever."...  

A great topic! To be continued! New tag: "simulacra."

ADDED: Another makeup anomaly I've been seeing is what looks like painted-on lower eyelashes on men — something like what Twiggy did in the 1960s:



I don't think this is drawn on with eyeliner, Twiggy-style. I think it is added on within the computer. Look for these eyelashes, please, and let me know when you see them. They're freaky! I suspect the rubberized look I was seeing was also a computer manipulation.

"When you strike at a king, you must kill him," said Ralph Waldo Emerson, famously.

I think Emerson was talking to Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., and Holmes was attacking Plato, hence the riposte. The physical attack was metaphorical. Holmes and Emerson were jousting in the world of words, and Emerson got off a bon mot for the ages.

I'm talking about that this morning because James Woods got kicked off Twitter:

James Woods, one of the few conservative stars in Hollywood, has been locked out of his Twitter account for over a week now for “abusive behavior,” once again demonstrating the double standard the tech giant holds when it comes to enforcing rules.

Twitter suspended Woods for a tweet that read, “‘If you try to kill the King, you best not miss’ #HangThemAll,” according to his girlfriend Sara Miller....

The tweet was apparently in reference to the Mueller report, which found no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. The quote is from Ralph Waldo Emerson and has been used in various forms in movies and TV shows like The Wire....

"You best not miss" is the form of words used on "The Wire" (video here), and on "The Wire" the physical attack is not metaphorical, but with a real gun with bullets. But Woods was using the physical attack metaphorically. The idea — which deserves to be expressed — is — I think — that there was a coup attempt on Trump and it didn't work, therefore those who attempted it are in desperate trouble.

This isn't a true threat, just rough political discourse. It's not much like Emerson, because Emerson was speaking in a context where it was clear that only ideas were at stake. Holmes couldn't physically threaten the long-dead Plato. I think it's also clear that Woods was talking about political power and legal troubles, though the legal troubles are bad enough that they could lead to a physical impact on a human being — that is, a prison term. But there is a problem with Twitter's clipped language and vast dissemination. Among the thousands or millions of readers of a post like "If you try to kill the King, you best not miss’ #HangThemAll" are confused, paranoid, angry people who might hear a message to go out and kill somebody.

I'm checking the #HangThemAll at Twitter, and I see this:

James woods was banned for saying #HangThemAll about treasonous leaders on the left and was banned from Twitter, but @kathygriffin isn't banned for this: pic.twitter.com/tT1x4eeVnJ

— The JP McGlone (@JPMcGlone) May 4, 2019

Yes, and that's the problem. Twitter needs to apply its standard from a neutral viewpoint.

"But isn't a virtual mob much less damaging than a real one? I've suggested as much myself, most recently in a column titled 'If you think another civil war is imminent, get off Twitter.'"

"Yet more and more the venom has been bleeding into the real world, with boycotts, doxings, firings, death threats, and groveling apologies offered to placate mobs wielding digital pitchforks. It increasingly feels like it's just a matter of time before real-world violence breaks out in response to an online conflagration. But that's not the only, or even the most far-reaching, threat that Twitter poses to our civic life. As Andrew Sullivan noted nearly three years ago in an important essay on America's slow drift toward tyranny, Plato believed that political regimes and the souls of their citizens mirror each other. A change in political form can lead to a change in the character of citizens, and vice versa. Tyrannies emerge in many ways, but sometimes they arise when the citizens of a democratic political community develop tyrannical souls. What Twitter shows us is a real-time ultrasound of the souls of America's cultural and intellectual elite and its most committed activists — the people in charge of disseminating knowledge and who take the lead in organizing political action in our society...."

From "How Twitter could be the death of liberal democracy" by Damon Linker at The Week.

"While Plato and Aristotle were concerned with character-centred virtue ethics, the Aztec approach is perhaps better described as socially-centred virtue ethics."

"If the Aztecs were right, then ‘Western’ philosophers have been too focused on individuals, too reliant on assessments of character, and too optimistic about the individual’s ability to correct her own vices. Instead, according to the Aztecs, we should look around to our family and friends, as well as our ordinary rituals or routines, if we hope to lead a better, more worthwhile existence.... When I speak about the Aztecs – the people dominant in large parts of central America prior to the 16th-century Spanish conquest – even professional philosophers are often surprised to learn that the Aztecs were a philosophical culture. They’re even more startled to hear that we have (many volumes of) their texts recorded in their native language, Nahuatl.... To explain the Aztec conception of the good life, it’s helpful to begin in the sixth volume of a book called the Florentine Codex... This particular section records the speeches following the appointment of a new king, when the noblemen appear to compete for the most eloquent articulation of what an ideal monarch should be and do. The result is a succession of speeches like those in Plato’s Symposium, wherein each member tries to produce the most moving expression of praise...."

From "Life on the slippery Earth/Aztec moral philosophy has profound differences from the Greek tradition, not least its acceptance that nobody is perfect" by philosophy professor Sebastian Purcell (Aeon).

"What we wear should not matter: Ideas, arguments, theories, and thought are the stuff in which academics trade."

"But our institutions are riven by power, and teaching and research are themselves underwritten by claims to authority and expertise. No matter how much we know, we still feel the need to show that we know it to solidify our status as bona fide intellectuals, deserving of deference and respect. One of the ways we demonstrate our possession of knowledge is in what we wear — an age-old tradition beginning with Plato orating in a toga. Only now we stroke manicured beards in thought, carry bulging book bags to demonstrate commitment, and wield Moleskine notebooks when inspiration strikes."

From "What We Wear in the Underfunded University," by Shahidha Bari in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

My first question is: Plato orated in a toga?

The toga is the distinctive garment of ancient Rome (not Greece). And here's something interesting about it, from "SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome" (by Mary Beard*):

Everyday Roman clothing – tunics, cloaks and even occasionally trousers – was much more varied and colourful than this.** Togas, however, were the formal, national dress: Romans could define themselves as the gens togata, ‘the race that wears the toga’, while some contemporary outsiders occasionally laughed at this strange, cumbersome garment. And togas were white, with the addition of a purple border for anyone who held public office. In fact, the modern word ‘candidate’ derives from the Latin candidatus, which means ‘whitened’ and refers to the specially whitened togas that Romans wore during election campaigns, to impress the voters. In a world where status needed to be on show, the niceties of dress went even further: there was also a broad purple stripe on senators’ tunics, worn beneath the toga, and a slightly narrower one if you were the next rank down in Roman society, an ‘equestrian’ or ‘knight’, and special shoes for both ranks.

So the modern word ‘candidate’ derives from the Latin candidatus, which means ‘whitened’.... Perhaps we should eschew the whiteness-infected word "candidate."
___________________

* Speaking of "beards in thought."

** "This" refers to Cesare Maccari's 1888 painting of something that happened in 63 BC (Cicero denounced Catiline to the Roman Senate):

How animal-expert cat owners justify letting their cats out to roam the neighborhood and kill songbirds.

Here's WaPo's "Cats are bird killers/These animal experts let theirs outside anyway." (Via Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.) It's not just about cats and birds. It's about the human mind and what I think is the single most pithy thing you can say about it: People believe what they want to believe. It's fascinating to see this process at work in such an elaborate, blatant context.

IN THE COMMENTS: David Begley said:

"People believe what they want to believe."

That insight was stated by Christian Bale in the movie, "American Hustle." Screenplay by David O.Russell.

That's really true in this election.

I'll bet "People believe what they want to believe" is said in a lot of movies. Kind of like "Let's get out of here," which we used to insist was said in every movie. Trying to figure out who first said "People believe what they want to believe" is like trying to find who first said "It takes one to know one" or "To each his own."

But I gave it a bit of a try and ended up on a page of quotes for the proposition "willful ignorance." It lets people "like" the quotes and the most-like one comes from Plato: "We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light."

There's an Ayn Rand one for you Ayn Rand folks: "The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see." I like the Benjamin Franklin: "We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid."

Begley connected it to the election (as did I, to myself, writing the post), so let me feature the Isaac Asimov quote:

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

And here's Ray Bradbury:

But you can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can't last.

ADDED: That afraid-of-the-light quote isn't really from Plato. I thought it sounded un-Plato-y. Here's a list of things Plato didn't say.

Andrew Sullivan has a point but it's too hard to see.

He's back — instructing us about the meaning of Plato's Republic and Trump as "an extinction-level event" — but here's the challenge:



I know, I can make the text tinier and the headline box will take its intended place within the illustration...



... but this is like a shop without a wheelchair ramp. You're saying you don't care about people like me.

Anyway, here, I'll excerpt a paragraph — one that's not about Plato or Trump-as-Hitler dramatics. This is some well-stated political analysis about Hillary:

Remember James Carville’s core question in the 1992 election: Change versus more of the same? That sentiment once elected Clinton’s husband; it could also elect her opponent this fall. If you like America as it is, vote Clinton. After all, she has been a member of the American political elite for a quarter-century. Clinton, moreover, has shown no ability to inspire or rally anyone but her longtime loyalists. She is lost in the new media and has struggled to put away a 74-year-old socialist who is barely a member of her party. Her own unfavorables are only 11 points lower than Trump’s (far higher than Obama’s, John Kerry’s, or Al Gore’s were at this point in the race), and the more she campaigns, the higher her unfavorables go (including in her own party). She has a Gore problem. The idea of welcoming her into your living room for the next four years can seem, at times, positively masochistic.

Okay, this is something I've been wanting to talk about — reliance on "unfavorables." It seems to me, we're going to end up with 2 major-party candidates that most people don't like. The election is going to be decided by the people who are going to be stuck voting for one of 2 people neither of whom they like. The question isn't who has higher unfavorability, but which one is more capable of getting a vote from a person who is disgusted by both of them. As Sullivan's paragraph suggests, one is exciting, risky, and entertaining. The other is dreary, predictable, and medicinal.

WaPo columnist Kathleen Parker, trying her best to exemplify elitism, writes a column titled "Plato would be horrified by Trump’s rise."

Here. A commenter has an apt response:

As if Parker knows or cares anything about Plato. And as if her readers don't know and care even less. Plato was horrified by democracy itself. He thought the best form of government was one in which there's a dictator who's a philosopher. I'm supposed to care about what would horrify Plato?

I'm sure there's a Greek word for the rhetorical device of adopting the guise of someone else to deliver an opinion of one's own. It's a classic of religionists — who seem to know what God/Jesus/Muhammad thinks of what you are doing — and mothers — who've historically resorted to the terrifying news that your father wouldn't like that.

The column, by the way, was originally developed for a lecture she gave at the University of Virginia School of Law. She exhibits pride this provenance, but I can't imagine using the law school classroom to lambaste a particular political candidate.