“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.” -- Fyodor Dostoyevsky (from The Brothers Karamazov)
To many Americans, the election of the forty-fifth president is an ongoing punch in the gut. To others, it remains a profound relief. The question is: for how long?
The original sorting mechanism for voters in this election cycle was the deft appeal not to reason and facts, but to emotion and tribalism. This, of course, is the oldest kind of politics. It discloses the roots of partisanship and shouldn’t surprise anyone. Still, what a distance there is between tribe and truth. In an era so completely saturated with information it is shocking to behold, even after the election, the growing chasm between information and veracity. When a library far superior than any ancestor ever dreamed of can be held in one’s hand, it is astonishing to witness the many ways that reason and wisdom can be so deliberately cast aside, the many ways—more concerning to me—that truth can be no match for ignorance.
Speaking specifically in terms of the recent election—and the many chaotic days that have followed in its wake—it’s easy to provide an orienting example. As a campaign strategy, the sustained petition to the shared misery and fears of the disenfranchised (and largely white) voter by an individual who is clearly no champion of the disenfranchised white voter is a living expression of the “post-truth” age in which we now suddenly dwell—an age that is hosting the most serious moral and existential crisis this country has faced in a generation.
Trump’s love for “the poorly educated voter” and his campaign team’s decision to fraudulently capitalize on the pain of this group in order to get votes will be a topic for scholars of politics and ethics to sort through long after we all (including the “poorly educated”) awake from this nightmarish convulsion of history. To make impossible promises to any group of people—especially those who have faith that candidates are at least conscious of some shred of truth outside of the wink-wink hyperbole of campaign rhetoric—is truly what merits the term “deplorable” in this election year. Lies, in any season, never create fertile moral or civic terrain; and to spit them out so brazenly, pathologically, and enthusiastically reveals a profound illness—not only in the person who does the lying, but also in the culture that elected him. And this means everybody.
In this sense, Trump is a kind of Caliban of modern politics. He was created by a crass, consumerist, “reality” TV culture and has revealed himself, like Caliban in Shakespeare’s last play, to be the living embodiment of base appetites. Appetites, of course, power the engine of consumer culture; they are implacable, need to be fed, and Trump is certainly hungry. But it is also becoming increasingly clear—especially to those who have not had the time or inclination to properly focus on this global train wreck—that Trump’s appetites are not only malformed and disordered, but are insatiable and endless in their need. He is hungry not for service, but for attention; he desires not truth, but power; he wants not the common good of the many, but the narrow good of the few. Appetites can spread through the hive of society like an emotional contagion and its effects are without boundary. As Marilynne Robinson wisely counsels "Fear operates as an appetite or an addiction. You can never be safe enough"—an insight that seems particularly apt in this case. The appetites Trump possesses are neither original nor unique; but they are out of joint in a president and disrupt the best of American tradition. More pragmatically, they will not engender any semblance of peace, justice, and polity either at home or abroad.
In this way, Trump is best understood not as a dialogical response to Hillary Clinton (and, even against Clinton’s errors in leadership, this opposition reveals another species of moral injustice and social degradation), nor even as a foil to the goodness and civility of President Obama (and one need not agree politically with President Obama to acknowledge the unimpeachability of his personal character). No. These now ancillary antagonists in the unfolding drama are no longer on the spectrum of opposition when it comes to naming the toxic defects of Number 45. We have moved well beyond the distracting plot points of identity politics and are into new territory here. The battle now (as ever, really) is a moral one; and Trump’s team will side step this reality by concocting a series of adversaries to keep the public occupied in a fake drama. This is what is meant when critics of all parties and stripes assert that Trump and the brain stem of his team are building an administration based on cock-and-bull deception and propaganda. Hubris, boorishness, and lassitude best characterize this presidential skill set and the enabling pack of Trumpian yes-people sell it to the public as political rectitude. As much as he’ll tell us otherwise, it is Trump (and those who are pulling his strings and running the larger game) who are making a colossal mess. It is Trump, a worse angel of our nature if there ever was one, who parades in front of the Lincoln Memorial in a sick parody of presidential possibility. It is Trump who defiles the integrity of the Oval office in a pageant of puerile tweets, unprecedented incompetence, and epic narcissism.
How elitist and ignorant it would be, though, to cite Shakespeare and then indict the “poorly educated” as singularly complicit in the mess we are in. This is not the point and I will not facilitate such an injustice. Shakespeare simply understands humanity as well as anyone ever has. One could even argue, as Harold Bloom does, that Shakespeare created modern notions of humanity and this is no small thing. Shakespeare not only understood reason and facts, but the many ways that reason and facts can be distorted and abused—especially by those in power. In my experience, the “poorly educated” of any stripe always sit up in their chairs and are transformed when they encounter the Bard in his native habitat (i.e. the stage). Why? Because Shakespeare writes the truth and it explodes in our consciousness when we are confronted by its compelling majesty. The Tempest is all about Prospero getting “woke” to his mistakes and he rightly takes the blame for the poor leadership, deception, and lack of care that created Caliban. In the last act, Prospero admits culpability for Caliban, this “demi-devil--For he's a bastard one…this thing of darkness! Acknowledge mine.”
I have little respect for elitists; and they, like me, have their problems. So many elitists are also “poorly educated” and are as guilty as compromising personal integrity and the common good as anybody. Still, to bring it home with the Bard, “All the world’s a stage” and in our unfolding human drama the “greater virtue is in mercy than in vengeance.” We all have blind spots, think errantly at times, and are in need of correction. To live and dwell in the truth is difficult which is why it’s so profoundly valuable. To engage in any journey towards the truth—in the many shapes and educational paths this journey takes— is hard work. It is the highest drama of human existence and remains the central value of any evolved culture. Moreover (or more practically, if you’d like), it is as important to national and global security as anything else.
So when an administration moves to muzzle the media or when it moves to curtail funding for the humanities and sciences—when it moves to increase suppression of the truth telling mechanisms of society—you can be sure that the lions will roar and defend their dens. If you’d like to trace the origins of the “Post Truth” age, look no further than the gutting of the humanities in education and culture. Speaking as an educator, this development is most important to me and it transcends, as it should, my tribal political commitments and values. The robust humanities programs that resurrected culture in the aftermath of World War II were nurtured and cultivated for a reason. Humanities education not only gives a society the very tools it requires to fashion a just state, but also engenders personal empowerment and the collective will to shine a light on its lies. As Flannery O’Connor observed, “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” Trump’s error is that, aside from having no sense of history, he does not respect his base enough to come clean about this. This not only compromises his personal credibility, but the credibility—and the safety—of America.
Dear reader, like Shakespeare’s wise Gonzalo you may say that the “truth you speak doth lack some gentleness/And time to speak it in. You rub the sore/ When you should bring the plaster.” And you’d have a point to score against this Catholic—especially during the penitential season of Lent. However, it is deception that is out or order in any season and it must be called to rights. Clearly, Trump’s whoppers—or what Newt Gingrich calls “campaign devices”—helped get him into the White House; but what will this unfortunate penchant for alternative facts and habit of (un)conscious fabrications mean for civic and global health in the days to come? We are already seeing scandal upon scandal—all having to do with one lie or another and this is simply unsustainable. As Buddhist wisdom reminds us: “Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”
Pope Paul VI wrote fifty years ago “For the lover of Truth, Dialogue is always possible” and people of good will are always ready to dialogue. But how does one dialogue when there is such a symphony of mendacity and self-promoting misdirection in play? That’s easy: tell the truth. The difficult part is that you have to love the truth in order to tell it.
And share your tax returns.