Making Sense of POTUS: Part II--Traits 1 and 2

At the end of Nine Consistent Things About Donald Trump, I promised more on the traits that I identified in the post. You may remember that the first two are:

1. There is nothing more important than being successful and admired.
2. Morality in general, and honesty in particular, are instruments (among others) used to achieve success and admiration; neither carries an imperative.

Needless to say, there is an abundance of proof of the President's obsession with success and admiration. Indeed, my second post to this blog (To be-or not to be-surprised by Trump: Part II--On the Couch) discussed exactly that. Of course, the Donald keeps replenishing the supply, too.

To understand Mr.Trump's use of morality and honesty to amass more success and admiration, consider how he responds each time he's confronted about his crass commentary. Three episodes, occurring early in the primary season, will amply prove the point.

Take a look at how he defended his remarks about Carley Fiorina's face, Megyn Kelly bleeding, and Mitt Romney being on his knees. His reference to Fiorina's face was metaphoric, he said. And he was referring, he claimed, only to those orifices that are north of Kelly's neck. While Romney being on his knees was, Trump said, an allusion to begging. 

Each of these explanations is just 

plausible enough that the Donald can significantly minimize blow-back by denying that he meant what he clearly implied, and enjoy the political results of having said something outrageous at the same time. 

In other words, he uses the truth for political gain, which he defines as success and admiration. He does not tell the truth for its own sake.

Making Sense of POTUS: Part I--Nine Consistent Things About Donald Trump

Here are nine consistent things about Donald Trump, gleaned from his public persona. In upcoming posts, I'll talk about each one in detail.

1-There is nothing more important to the

   President-Elect than being successful and   

   admired.

2-Morality in general, and honesty in particular, 

   are instruments (among others) used to achieve 

   success and admiration ; neither carries an    

   imperative.

3-The Donald will not take responsibility for any   

   ill-conceived action or comment, however 
   intense the blowback is.

4-When Trump is forced to confront his bad 
   behavior, he ignores it, denies it, or rationalizes 
   it as the result of being victimized.     
    
5-The POTUS-Elect feels entitled to special 
   treatment and thus also feels victimized by 
   others' criticism of him.

6-When Donald feels victimized, he becomes 
   angry and publicly shames the object(s) of his 

   ire.

7-Mr. Trump is   neither insightful nor prone to guilt, partially

accounting for his ability to tolerate his own contradictions and hypocrisy.

8-In his worldview, people are tools and not 

   intrinsically valuable.

9-In his worldview, history, precedent and 

   protocol are irrelevant.

Overall, not a pretty picture.

Stay tuned for more on each of these.

[There is a problem with the mobile reformatting of this post. My apologies.]

Post-Modern Political Honesty: Part IV--Trump's Surreal Denial of Russian Hacking

As I said in Part III of this series, Donald Trump has raised Post Modern Political Honesty to new heights, or depths if you like. That is, to the level of surreal denial. 

Take, for instance, his continued refusal to admit that the Russian government hacked into the Democratic National Committee's computer network.

We have before us what has become a ubiquitous question. Why is Trump maintaining this position in the face of fairly convincing evidence to the contrary? Discarding the knee-jerk, albeit accurate, answer--because he's Donald Trump--we are left with the following answers. (None is exclusive of the others.) The POTUS-Elect is maintaining this position on Russian hacking because he is:

1. Espousing a neo-post World War II foreign relations approach
2. Apathetic about the potential implications of such a declaration
3. Subject to dramatically narcissistic perceptions about the 2016 election and Vladimir Putin

I'll talk about each of these in this, and my next, post.

A Neo-Post World War II Foreign Relations Approach

Mr. Trump is consistent (enough), in his infidelity to history in the name of opportunity, that his style can be categorized as a foreign policy approach. To begin defining what his neo-post World War II international relations approach is, let's consider what it is not. First, an approach is not a policy. Foreign policies are specific strategies to protect national interests and reach goals in the international space. Second, an approach is not a philosophy. Philosophy concerns itself with the fundamental nature of knowledge, truth, reality, and existence. This may seem impressionistic to some and a gratuitous shot to others--and both would be right--but the Donald just doesn't come across like someone who would be interested in this sort of thing.

So, what IS the POTUS-Elect's neo-post World War II international relations approach? Otherwise asked, which of the structures set in place at the end of WWII does Trump want to change? These are not difficult questions to answer. Germany has been reunited and the Iron Curtain was drawn. It is but the contest between the West's North-Atlantic-Treaty vision and the Soviet's post-Yalta expansionist vision that remains. The current iteration of this is the US and NATO versus Russia and its client states.

NATO Secretary General congratulates President Donald J. Trump on his inauguration

Trump's approach has revealed itself through his public commentary, on several occasions, in which he questioned whether the US should continue to honor its obligations under the Treaty. Specifically, he suggested that the US might not respond to the invocation of Article 5 by countries whose organizational dues are in arrears. Alternately phrased, the POTUS-Elect may not honor its promise to respond to an attack on any NATO country as if it was an attack on all member states. 

Non-participation by the US would neuter the last post-WWII boundary still in place.

At other points, the POTUS-to-be has wondered aloud about whether NATO's interminable mediocre performance, and unyielding biases, should result in its dissolution. Both non-participation by the US, and the dissolution of the Treaty, would allow Russian imperialism to continue-and exponentiate-unchecked. While NATO is, admittedly, flawed and has not prevented Putin's recent land grabs in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, it's the ONLY buffer we have at the moment. 

Dissolving the last post-WWII structure standing also virtually guarantees another world war.

In my next post, I'll explain the other reasons why Trump is denying the Russian DNC hacking. They are, that he is:

• Apathetic about the potential implications of such a declaration
• Subject to dramatically narcissistic perceptions about the 2016 election and Vladimir Putin

Post-Modern Political Honesty: Part I--Conservatives Are Not Liberals!

This is the first piece in a series about political honesty. It sets the philosophical framework for the rest of the sequence. If a view from 40,000 feet is not your taste, you can skip to the next post without loosing much at all.

From a conceptual level (excluding the phenomenological perspective), a large enough change in quantity or extent is viewed as a change in quality or kind. A couple of examples. 

 

In space, when matter reaches a certain density, it warps space-time and creates a black hole. No one would call unwarped space and a black hole the same thing, yet their differences can be explained by how dense the matter in each is. 

Turning to political ideology for another example, consider that a traditional conservative embraces social uniformity, old-style free marketeering, and hawkishness in foreign relations. A modern liberal endorses acceptance of social difference, a tempered marketplace, and footprints by the Departments of State and Defense that are in line with the will of the United Nations. Notice that each element of conservative ideology is thematically related to an element of liberal ideology. Moreover, the elements of each thematic dyad can be viewed as the poles of a continuum:

Social Homogeneity----------------------------- Social Heterogeneity

Unbridled Capitalism--------------------------   Highly Regulated Markets

Unilateral Use of Power------------------------ Community of Nations Determined Use of Power

Otherwise said, while no one would equate conservatism and (non-classical) liberalism, they are distinguished by the degree to which social uniformity, free markets and superpower status are embraced or eschewed.

So, what does this have to do with honesty?

It is my contention that honesty in political speech has crossed a threshold. Its prima facie moral value has been replaced with its argumentation value. This is a consequence of utilizing the same narratives and tropes to spin dishonesty, with ever-greater frequency and ever-wider application, resulting in language in which truth is valued only to the extent that it serves the speaker's ends. This is a change in kind emanating from a significant change in extent. This is post-modern political honesty.

Enter, The Clintons and The Donald...