Resident Trump: Delusionist in Chief

Donald Trump went back on the campaign trail yesterday. Three weeks of being battered by reality is too much for him so he seeks renewal amidst an adoring crowd where security will remove any dissenting voice.

He is a frightened child in a thunderstorm, sucking his thumb and clutching his teddy bear. With nukes. And this chaotic, ignorant, inexperienced, unprincipled, and increasingly delusional person - this person who allegedly “tells it like it is” when almost every assertion out of his mouth is demonstrably false - is inexplicably considered the American ideal of leadership by an uncomfortably large number of devoted, fact-resistant, Americans apparently denied the benefits of an adequate primary and secondary education in civics..

I am done arguing with them.

Because arguments must be based on knowledge. And because knowledge is justified, true, belief. And because for an assertion of knowledge to be held justified it must be deduced from broadly accepted “self-evident” truths or inductively evidenced from the replicable testing of scientific hypotheses by peer-reviewed communities of experts in the relevant fields of inquiry.

That still leaves plenty of wiggle room for argument among reasonable people of all political leanings. Any particular claim can be challenged on any number of the grounds above.

But the point is, unless adversaries in argument are simultaneously allies in getting to the truth of the matter with a broadly shared understanding regarding the rules of getting to “justified, true, belief” argument is impossible.

And our current crisis actually transcends THAT dire situation and questions WHETHER SUCH THINGS AS PUBLICLY ACCESSIBLE “FACTS” AND “TRUTH” ACTUALLY EXIST.

And, since Richard M. Nixon famously led his party off the reality rails by claiming the support of a “silent majority” - the first case, in my recollection, where the LACK of any evidence of an entity was taken as PROOF THAT THE ENTITY EXISTS - political cynics such as Lee Atwater and Karl Rove have exploited an American tendency towards anti-intellectualism (at its worse) and pragmatism (at its best) to use “truth” and “facts” as commodities to be traded away in exchange for political power.

And that transaction, repeatedly used for political advantage for close to fifty years, has brought as to Donald Trump, fabulously wealthy champion of the working class and protector of American values.

And with the very CONCEPTS of publically accessible facts and truth alien to his supporters, we’ve reached the point where ARGUMENT is no longer possible.

And when argument is possible, the only recourse is to power.

And if the constitutional, peaceful, application of power by our two Americas is hijacked by extremists and people of violence on both sides, there will be no argument that can rein it back in.

Silent Majority (Wikipedia)