The more seriously we take Trump, the less seriously we find ourselves having to take Trump, and the less seriously we take Trump, the more seriously we have to take him.
Comments Elsewhere
Comment Elsewhere: To @BurtLikko under “How to Fix a Broken Elephant: Prologue”
Posted in Comments Elsewhere, Featured, Political Philosophy, Politics Tagged with: Conservatism, Schmitt
“no good options” (Obama Doctrine Notes)
“No good options” at some point becomes a rule of moral abdication – a declaration of incapacity to distinguish between worse and better, or of paralysis. Obama himself seems to oscillate between the two views: On the one hand, since there is no good option, judgment has to be suspended, but on the other hand he wants to view or wants us to accept inaction or maximal distance as the better option, so “as good as we can get if not perfect.”
“incredibly piss poor leadership” (Obama Doctrine Notes)
Obama seemed to be hoping that a legacy of American “credibility” on such threats would be sufficient to make this one work, without acknowledging – perhaps according to all the best and latest political scientific critiques of “credibility” – the possible damage to American credibility that his own policies had reinforced.
Plus fascistique…
Trump is many ugly things, but he’s not a very developed ideologue. In a way, that might even make him more authentically fascist than the fascists, who merely talked about power for the sake of power and about the rejection of intellectualism.
Comments on “Islam is the rock on which the liberal order broke?”
History may instead record that what broke this latest “liberal order” (a typical contradiction in terms), as before and likely again, as inevitably, was the latest liberal order itself. Yet historians may alternatively – or also – someday record that it was liberalism that finally broke Islam or the Islamic Order, and, perhaps, in so doing repaired one or both – though it may always be too early to say so.