Ask A Trump Supporter What S/he Personally Intends To Do To Nourish The Common Good

Dear Arthur,

Thanks for your email.

I very much enjoyed the second paragraph of your Trump reflection.

When "we" ask people what they themselves will do to advance The Common Good, the discussion abruptly shifts until they regain enough composure to perform stabilizing contortions, then double down on habitual reflexes again. 

In the case of many (most?) Trump supporters -- and here I lean on Lakoff's work -- people are innately submissive to stern, rigid, uncompromising-enforcers-of-personal-responsibility whose ultimate goal is the pontification of bombastic ideals proclaimed from "Christian" pulpits or the bully pulpit of The Oval Office.

Due to childhood conditioning these stiff-necked, supercilious, holier-than-thou "conservatives" are on the lookout for heavy-handed alpha-dogs and chest-thumping simians who will "take charge" (just like Daddy did!) and "right wrongs" for "the family" and for "the pack."

However, what they actually do is never creative, relying instead on the seeming simplification of violence, their belligerent leaders spouting "godly" preachments and striking blustery poses punctuated by retaliatory punishment of domestic nerdowells - and international evildoers - the whole deadly matrix manifesting as climactic violence on "desginated enemies," almost all of whom will be damaged -- and enough killed -- so "they won't do that again!"..... except the hatred unleashed by vindictiveness insures that "they will do that again!" - and sooner rather than later!

Enter perpetual warfare.

I wish I were doing a better job "keeping hope alive," but Trump's triumph is burden enough without so much as a sneak peak at the next four years of Sisyphean labor.

Pax-Shalom-Salaam

On Thu, Dec 8, 2016 at 8:44 PM, AC wrote:

The election of Donald Trump to the White House has caused quite a bit of political excitement and concern.  Just for starters, that’s a good thing.  We can use the opportunity to pick up the pace here in Calgary. 

My most recent blog post – Donald Trump, the World, and Us – is available at http://www.arthurclarkglobalcitizen.com/ along with the archive.  For ease of access and easy reading I have also appended it below.

Our next session in the Inquiry and Dialogue series on root causes of violence will be at my home on Wednesday February 22 beginning at 7 PM.  It will be  the first session dedicated to the art of dialogue as developed by David Bohm.  Understood and used skilfully, Bohmian dialogue can help transform culture and enrich the lives of participants. 

The plan is to have several topics for the breakout groups to choose from, including one or two that might be contentious if they were topics of ordinary discussion.  As we begin to learn the art, however, we’ll practice listening to other points of view even as we voice our own – presenting our own views as pieces of a larger picture which everyone can experience as it begins to take shape.   It will be a new experience for me. 

Looking forward,

Arthur

Donald Trump, the World, and Us

“Everyone talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it,” is a familiar bit of humor that also applies to a lot of talk about politics.  One of the major functions of elections in the United States is to put someone in office who can be the scapegoat for our own passivity as citizens. 

I have several times had the opportunity to ask someone talking about Donald Trump what they themselves plan to do over the next four years to move toward better human options for the future.  At least on these few occasions where I have tried it, the response has drifted very quickly back to talking about Donald Trump.  Usually it takes less than 30 seconds.  This suggests they are far more interested in what Donald Trump will do (a domain in which they have almost no leverage or responsibility) than in what they will do (a domain in which they have the decisive leverage and responsibility).

Hillary Clinton was widely perceived as the candidate of the establishment, Donald Trump as the anti-establishment candidate.  The media seemed to have a taboo on even mentioning the names of other candidates and the alternatives they were offering to the Democratic and the Republican options.  Avoid the issues, just think about the candidates we are advertising - yours truly, the Mass Media. 

Donald Trump is unpredictable and egomaniacal.   There are all sorts of risks of having someone like that in the office of President.  We cannot predict the details of what will happen.  It could be apocalyptic, but it may also have some ironic positive outcomes.  One cheery but rather remote possibility is that the Democratic Party really will shake itself and begin selecting candidates who call for a visionary and pragmatic turn away from the road to hell.

So let’s consider a few things that are much more certain than the influence Donald Trump will have on our future.  Let’s consider the influence we will have on our future. 

The world is influenced by the political culture of the times.  The political culture at any given time and place is the product of the thoughts, words, and actions of the people living in that time and place – or of their ignorance, silence, and passivity.  In other words:  We create the political culture.  That culture determines a lot of things, including what kinds of political candidates we get. 

An exact duplicate of Adolf Hitler probably could not be a successful candidate for President of the United States, because the political culture and conditions in the United States are somewhat different from those of Weimar Germany.   Yet a charismatic, egomaniacal, unpredictable candidate who encourages inter-ethnic distrust and calls for American domination of the world might become President.  Some of Hitler’s characteristics have great appeal in the United States today. 

The United States government subscribes to a version of the Führerprinzip.  The party chooses a leader and the election determines which party’s leader is the President.  Once that choice is made, so the doctrine goes, the law should not constrain what the great leader can do.  Regime change, drone missile attacks, secret surveillance of ordinary citizens – you name it – that’s up to the great leader.  As Henry Kissinger put it, “The illegal we do immediately, the unconstitutional takes a little longer.” 

A version of the Führerprinzip operates in the United States government itself, but also among the citizenry.  Uncritical deference to authority figures is a very dangerous habit.  Of course we can openly criticize the President without fearing the Gestapo, but that misses the point.  We are headed down a very dangerous road.  If we prefer a different direction, then we as citizens must take personal and collective responsibility for choosing that direction and for moving in the direction of our choice.  Otherwise political outcomes will continue to be – I’ll put it gently – suboptimal.

Do you want a healthy global community for your children and grandchildren?  Or do you prefer Amerika über alles?  Be careful what you ask for.

When a presidential candidate says something along the lines of “we must all come together as Americans,” it puzzles me.  A shared identity and purpose is essential for the future of human beings, not just of Americans.  We need a healthy global community, and effective leadership in that direction cannot come from the President of the United States.   There are emerging challenges to human survival, and we will stand a reasonable chance of meeting those challenges successfully only if we can transcend the “us versus them” of nationalism.  The contemporary American political establishment is not the place to look for that transcendence.  Any intelligent adult can figure this out, but the President cannot say such things. 

Furthermore, why should this concept of coming together undergo the debasement of political sloganeering?   Why slow down the process by waiting for the President to understand it, or debase it by having the President be its spokesperson? 

Bringing people together is something that just about any responsible adult can do, and there are countless ways of doing it.  There is nothing except lack of imagination to stop most of us from actively creating dialogue across socioeconomic and ethnic boundaries.  This is something that we ourselves must do – not the US President.  Helen Keller said “Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.”   We must be the source for that kind of breakthrough thinking.

If we want better human options for the future, we must ask ourselves every day: How can we personally and actively change the political culture of our time and place?  This is true whether we are citizens of Canada or of the United States or of any other polity.  Active pursuit of answers to this question will require breaching walls of silence and indifference and distrust, to create dialogue and build trust among people with very diverse and even adversarial world views.  This must be done creatively and relentlessly and respectfully.  Talking about Donald Trump won’t do the trick.