Nobody Knows....

The chattering classes (which I have recently joined with this blog) are in a frenzy of speculation about what Trump is going to do when he takes office.  And there is a great lament about the terrible uncertainty, because nobody knows….

     There is certainly a kernel of truth to this lament.  It seems that Trump himself does not know what he is going to do, from moment to moment or in the long term.  There is always a high level of uncertainty when one is dealing with someone as mentally disordered as Trump.  

     On the other hand.  We make countless decisions everyday that depend largely on projections about the future behavior of other people.  These range from interactions with strangers, like driving or purchasing things in stores, to interactions with people of whom we have more particular knowledge, like students or friends.  A functional society will have norms in place to regulate impersonal interactions; and most of us learn a bit about human psychology and more about the motivations of specific others simply by paying a bit of attention to what goes on around us.  

     The decisions we make on the basis of these projections often are of life-altering consequence.  And we often make mistakes.  So often, in fact, that Schopenhauer says we might well “look upon life as an unprofitable episode, disturbing the blessed calm of non-existence.”  But what choice do we have?  Only acidheads and monks can live entirely in the moment.  And escaping into some fantasy fueled by religious ecstasy or political conviction doesn’t seem such a good idea.  A careful deployment of our powers of thought and observation, limited though they are, seems about the best we can do.

     This is not easy.  Just getting a handle on the facts about anything the least bit complicated takes a good bit of time and attention to a variety of sources of information.  Making sense of the facts requires some skill in logic and practical reasoning.  And the outcome of any decisions we make about what to do (including the decision to do nothing) will depend largely on how good a job we do of getting the facts and making sense of them.

     There is a moral imperative at stake here.  It is not simply a matter of prudence, of individual self-interest, whether we get the facts right and think carefully before we act.  We are social creatures, and the decisions we make affect those around us in significant ways.  We make economic decisions, political decisions, personal decisions that are often of life-altering consequence to our fellows.

     This essay by William Clifford gives a compelling account of our duty to inquire and think carefully.  (He also addresses the question of how to treat the views of experts, a rather pressing matter for modern society.)  And the web is full of resources to help you sharpen your own critical thinking skills.  Here and here are good places to start.  

     So…can we know what Trump is going to do?  We can certainly know what he has been doing.  Not just since the election.  Not just since the beginning of his campaign.  He has been a publicity hound for at least 50 years, and he has carefully cultivated a reputation as a misogynist and a con artist.  What possible reason is there to suppose he has changed, especially when all the evidence is to the contrary?

     We know how he campaigns.  He uses the rhetoric of violent racism and the most vulgar sexism to incite fear and hatred.  He promises retribution for the elitist devils who have hijacked this great country and denied real (white) Americans their due.  This is the style of a demagogue who will govern by setting the citizenry against itself.

     We know who he has appointed to implement whatever it is he plans.  You couldn’t pick a better team for further militarizing the country, both at home and abroad, and for further strengthening the plutocrats.  Government under the Trump administration will look less like a tool of the corporate sector, and more like simply an extension of it.  And, of course, there are just enough racists and homohysterics to keep the base inflamed.

     And, perhaps most important, we know Trump’s thoughts, as they are emitted nocturnally in his tweets.  I fear that interpreting the tweets of the Great Leader (for what other sort of leader could Trump be) will become a matter of some importance.  Perhaps someone will collect them and publish them in a little red book.

     We may not know the details of how Trump will proceed.  But the general outlines of his plan seem pretty evident.  If nobody knows, it is because nobody wants to know.