I'd forgotten the origin of the word partisan! This morning I am energized as i believe the chances of defeating Trump have increased significantly. But as your piece points out, we must take nothing for granted and understand that we are the agents of our own destiny.
So much depends upon . . . a definition. Great piece once again, Jay.
I always find etomologies fascinating, as word usage and meanings are ever changing. "Partisan" is one of those words that is used so often today that few think about its defining characteristics, that is, “one exhibiting blind, prejudiced, and unreasoning allegiance.”
Freisler: Divine justice indeed. Makes me wonder what might be in store for the MAGA-ite himself.
Not just with language, Maureen -- a longstanding practice for a literary person -- I more and more look to the origins of things for insight into their essence.
I'm afraid I'm long past hoping divine justice is divine rather than random. But I'll take it when it comes.
So Jay—with your highly intellectual take on the current situation—and your erudite description of the word partisan—my question to you is: do you consider yourself partisan?
Dee, I think you must know the answer to that question, so I'll pose a different one to you. Do you think I'm a person "exhibiting blind, prejudiced, and unreasoning allegiance"?
I do not—but you did pull the “especially” part of the definition rather than the simpler core of it as: “firm adherent of a party, faction, cause, or person.”
In that simpler part of the definition you might qualify.
That said—I do not think the lines are clear in today’s World—and I do think that many intellectuals mask their partisanship with the thoroughness of their side of the discussion. I know that I’m guilty of it from time to time.
As I’ve said to you often before—I firmly believe they’re all weasels—and many of us get too caught up in presenting a reasonable argument as to why we’re picking one lesser evil.
Do you think the constant lies fed to us for years by those in the know—including the VP—about Biden’s real condition—are any less egregious than Trump’s constant mistruths?
“I do not—but you did pull the “especially” part of the definition rather than the simpler core of it as: “firm adherent of a party, faction, cause, or person.”
In that simpler part of the definition you might qualify.”
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Rather than “pull” a part of the definition, I highlighted for brevity the clearest part of it. Do you think they’re two different definitions – they’re presented as one – or two aspects of the same phenomenon? Why do I say the part I didn’t quote is less clear? For the very reason, you think I might qualify as a partisan based on it. It references adherence to “party, faction, cause, or person.” It doesn’t include *principles* or *ideas* -- adherence to which instead of “party, faction, cause, or person” is what enables a person to break from them. That’s a very meaningful distinction – ideas and principles vs party, faction, cause, or person.
Maybe another reason you might mistake me for a partisan – to use terms from this essay – is the intensity and passion it seems I bring to this issue. But in this case, those qualities are founded in ideas and principles that I make very clear every time I write about Trump.
I do note that you hedged your opinion with “might.” One reason you might have done that is that you really don’t know a lot about the range or history of my political opinions beside my opposition to Trump. If you did, you wouldn’t entertain that suggestion about me.
I imagine you think I might qualify as a Democratic partisan, maybe a liberal one, but I have departed from a variety of liberal or progressive or Democratic positions over my life. Rather than run through a list, I’ll simply say that I have very little regard for George W. Bush, yet I made it very clear to conservative friends who abhorred Trump in 2016 that they needed to voted for Clinton because if it were my only choice I’d for Bush over Trump. I have little more regard for Mitt Romney, but if he were the alternative, I’d vote for him to keep Trump from power. I have a lot more regard for Liz Cheney – with whom I agree about almost nothing but democracy and the rule of law. I have that greater regard for her because she has more strength of character than Bush or Romney combined in their wildest dreams. I would vote for her to keep Trump from power because I trust that, while I’d oppose almost all of her policies, she would uphold and defend our form of government.
I’m sorry to upend your thinking about me, Dee, but I’m no partisan. I, like many others – I’m not special in this way and I’m only talking about myself because you made it about me – live my life according to well considered beliefs and principles, and it is those principles that guide my fervent opposition to Trump, not partisanship.
But you went on.
“That said—I do not think the lines are clear in today’s World—and I do think that many intellectuals mask their partisanship with the thoroughness of their side of the discussion.”
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Sorry, that’s a cop out. There are many complex, grey areas in life. Trump doesn’t live in the same country as any of them.
And “intellectuals mask their partisanship with the thoroughness of their side of the discussion”? Do you really want to argue that it’s bad to discuss an issue too thoroughly? Or is that the thoroughness complicates a simpler, more settled view you’re more comfortable sticking to?
“As I’ve said to you often before—I firmly believe they’re all weasels—and many of us get too caught up in presenting a reasonable argument as to why we’re picking one lesser evil.”
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Another cop out, the greatest of all I’m afraid. “They’re all weasels,” Everybody’s a crook” etc, etc. is an evasion of hard thinking about the world and of responsibility. We’re all fallen, we’re all sinners – stipulated. But some of us much more than others. Some of us are actually bad, and those of us who aren’t need to make the necessary discriminations. It’s our responsibility.
“Do you think the constant lies fed to us for years by those in the know—including the VP—about Biden’s real condition—are any less egregious than Trump’s constant mistruths?”
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The last time we discussed these issues – also when my own opining apparently provoked you enough – you voiced belief in some conspiracy that “they” were creating the crisis around Biden as part of *their* plan to install Michele Obama as the candidate at the convention.
Dee, are we close enough to that obviously not having been the case for you to acknowledge it? And when I challenged you on believing such a conspiratorial fantasy, you said you hadn’t seen any basis for not believing it. I pointed out this was contrary to logic, that logic requires we have good evidence and reason *to* believe things. We can believe anything in the world if we insist that they be proven *not to be true* before we stop believing them.
And now you want to believe a conspiracy about Biden’s “condition” AND you want to argue that such a conspiracy of lies (like the cloaking of Woodrow Wilson’s condition after a stroke, and FDR’s real health status, and JFK’s) is the equivalent of Trump’s behavior. In each of those cases, you want to argue that an isolated element, not malevolent, is equivalent to the full, almost immeasurable range of Trumps’s dishonesty, corruption, and cruelty over a lifetime, let alone his years in political life. Well, that is how one gets to “everyone’s a crook,” but it’s nonsense.
But more, Dee, you have no factual basis at all for claiming a conspiracy of “constant lies fed to us for years by those in the know” about Biden’s “condition.” Clearly, he has aged, growing more physically frail, slower of wit and response – sometimes. Not a good look for the superficiality of a presidential campaign, a very different matter from governing. But be that as it may, you have no evidence for making that conspiratorial claim at all, nothing but a willingness to believe it based on a particular world view you developed listening to the most untrustworthy, biased and – we end where we began – partisan sources, who have been making up those claims as part of the Trumpist presidential campaign.
That last time we spoke, you said you were no Trumper, but that against Biden, you were going to have to vote for Trump.
Yet from all I hear from you, you share the political world view of a Trumper. You repeat the Trump line about Democrats, about Biden, about the corruption of the country and government and justice system. You repeat the conspiracy theories. How are you not a Trumper?
Well, now, it isn’t Biden, of whom you were brought to think so badly, who is running against Trump. Now it looks like it’s going to be Harris. What about now?
Jay I love the engagement and I’m certainly open minded enough to consider your viewpoint—always have been. I didn’t make this about you—it is about you. It’s your essay. Everything you write is through your eyes—as much as you’d like to present your well-thought out opinions as evidentiary fact. ☺️
Thanks for laying out some of your political history. I certainly did not know any of it except from your wonderful historical essays about your family. And yes—I’m guilty of making assumptions just like everyone else.
Here’s what I believe to be true in our current political environment. You call it a cop out—that may be—but it doesn’t negate the truth of it.
Biden family is corrupt and has been selling political favor for decades. Anyone practicing for their entire lifetime and rising to the top of an obviously corrupt system would be by simple deduction—also corrupt.
Trump is a lout and also corrupt. By the same measure you don’t rise to the top of a corrupt NYC real estate development world without dirtying your hands and your soul.
As for Kamala I believe she’s a vapid fraud. Again by deduction—climbing (sleeping?) her way to the top in the most politically manipulated city and state in the union.
No one will save our democracy from the political and bureaucratic state that’s destroying it until we have term limits for every elected official and completely eliminate dark money and corporate lobbyists.
They’re all full of shit and arguing about which one is marginally better than another is like arguing for preferred flavors of spoiled yogurt.
Jay—respect for you, your powerful writing, and for our dialogue. I always learn something.
And peace unto you, as my dear departed high school buddy, Alan, liked to say, but we’re not done yet, Dee. You keep saying these things.
“I didn’t make this about you—it is about you. It’s your essay. Everything you write is through your eyes—as much as you’d like to present your well-thought out opinions as evidentiary fact.”
You’re confused. I exist in the world. You exist in the world. Others exist in the world. There is this phenomenon we call “world” that is not any of us, that exists independently of any of us. It embraces a “world” of things, including ideas. I wrote about ideas in the world, not myself. When I write about my family and father, then I am making it about myself. Even if I turned out to be weak and unable to live up the standards I articulate, even if I turned out to be a hypocrite, it would have no bearing on the arguments I make, which will stand or fall on their logical and empirically supported reasoning, not on me as an individual person. What I am referring to are also principles, established in logic, and there are names for the logical fallacies of confusing these matters.
“Here’s what I believe to be true in our current political environment. You call it a cop out—that may be—but it doesn’t negate the truth of it.”
This is a logical contradiction. A cop out is an evasion. What I’m calling a cop out is an evasion of the careful evidence gathering and reasoning to determine what may actually be true rather than what you’re inclined to believe. If it is a cop out, it can’t be true because you’re refusing to do the work that might determine the truth. For instance,
“Here’s what I believe to be true in our current political environment. . ..
Biden family is corrupt and has been selling political favor for decades. Anyone practicing for their entire lifetime and rising to the top of an obviously corrupt system would be by simple deduction—also corrupt.”
Yes, it is a simple deduction. It’s also a simplistic deduction. In logical terms an “unsound deduction.’ You have your explicit conclusion and one explicit premise and one implicit premise of a categorical syllogism:
MINOR PREMISE (implicit): Joe Biden (family) has been practicing politics in a corrupt system an entire lifetime.
MAJOR PREMISE: Anyone (all people) practicing for their entire lifetime and rising to the top of an obviously corrupt system is corrupt.
CONCLUSION: Joe Biden (family) is corrupt.
This is a valid conclusion, but it is *unsound*, meaning it does not accurately describe the world. It does not accurately describe the world because its premises offer sweeping generalizations about the world that are untrue precisely for the reason I have said you are copping out: rather than do the hard work of gathering facts and information that support your claims – and evaluating the accuracy and worth of what others present to you as facts – and then the hard work of judgmental discrimination among, for instance, the wide range of degrees by which a person may be good and honest in this life and not, you take the easy route of casting a net that embraces everyone.
All that you say about politics after these comments is flawed in the same way. You wrote that I “like to present your well-thought out opinions as evidentiary fact.” No, Dee. The difficulty is that you don’t distinguish between them. I know what an evidentiary fact is. I know what an opinion is. I know the difference between “mere” or “personal” or unsupported opinion and informed and reasoned opinion – the informed part being so on the basis of evidence. If you’d like to comb through my essays for where I discriminate or fail to between “fact” and reasoned opinion about the *truth*, or fail to, I welcome it.
The accusations you make about Joe Biden are entirely unsupported. They do no more than repeat the lies Trumpists have been telling about him for years now. He’s been in public life for 52 years. Where’s the *factual* history of corruption over those five decades? Can you present it? I can present it about Trump. I don’t mean my low opinion of Trump – I mean the facts, the evidence of his lifelong corruption and dishonesty. They are voluminous.
“As for Kamala I believe she’s a vapid fraud. Again by deduction—climbing (sleeping?) her way to the top in the most politically manipulated city and state in the union.”
The same ill-reasoned (and ill-willed) kind of claim that just repeats Trumpist misogyny and meanness. When was the last time you attacked a male political figure based in any part on his sexual-romantic history (factual or not)? The Dee I’ve come to know a little seems too good a man to be doing that. And you offer sexual inuendo about a person running now for office against DONALD TRUMP?
Dee, you say you learn something each time you read me or we have an exchange. Thank you for that. If it’s true, then I implore you – I do, it’s that important – to pause to consider what you’ve come by developed habit to believe and accept as so against what you really know, in what is a more complicated world than broad generalizations can represent.
>Would an appropriate resolution to avoid Civil War have been a moderate, both sides proposal of slavery on Saturdays only and the granting of Southern States’ right to secede — but only in their dreams — in order to make everyone equally unhappy?
The American Civil War was a violent, incomplete resolution to a certain form of slavery. Slavery-in-all-but-name remains commonplace, maintained by illusions of choice and opportunity.
>But in the twenty-first century, who outstrips for passionate intensity and demonstrated conviction the Islamist suicide-bomber fanatic?
That would be the rainbow sex cult, especially purveyors of gender ideology, who use suicidal death threats, censorship, and other forms of manipulation to force their religious views on sexuality and gender. They are, as you so eloquently put it:
>charlatan salesman that [...] divides people even from their own best interests, and, dividing them from each other, from their own best selves.
To this:
>One simply cannot be “Christian” and support Donald Trump.
Christians operate under a flawed assumption that sins ("broken relationships") can be easily forgiven, so long as one is able to admit they sinned in the first place. But Christian supporters of Trump fail to deeply examine the causes and effects of "sin", and thus fail to demand meaningful atonement from demogogues like Trump. This is because the root of their rabid disagreement are matters of sex and love, which are notoriously difficult to think or speak about rationally.
>Who wants to imagine the pathetic or tragic future of a United States in the Twenty-First Century that has lost its democracy?
I feel your angst. Have you considered that American democracy in its current form, for all its merits, is insufficient to avert tragedy?
“The American Civil War was a violent, incomplete resolution to a certain form of slavery. Slavery-in-all-but-name remains commonplace, maintained by illusions of choice and opportunity.”
I consider your expansive understanding of slavery, to the point of vanishing a violence. I must, therefore, declare war.
“>But in the twenty-first century, who outstrips for passionate intensity and demonstrated conviction the Islamist suicide-bomber fanatic?
“That would be the rainbow sex cult, especially purveyors of gender ideology, who use suicidal death threats, censorship, and other forms of manipulation to force their religious views on sexuality and gender.”
Local news fails me again: I’ve missed the reports of rainbow sex cult gender ideology suicide bombers.
“I feel your angst. Have you considered that American democracy in its current form, for all its merits, is insufficient to avert tragedy?”
Don’t feel my angst; understand the ideas. I have considered that humanity in any form is insufficient to avert tragedy. We carry on.
In what way have I "vanished" slavery, and how is that violent?
Many "freed" slaves faced greater violence and hardship in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, and crushing inequality persists, not just for the descendants of black slaves. Is any modern child growing up within the limiting effects of poverty, with all its attendant traumas, truly free? Upwards social mobility (pulling one's self up by their bootstraps) is rare, and this is just one of many examples of the illusion of choice within our culture. Extreme economic inequality is a legal form of slavery, a blatant immorality which must be fixed, but not through violent warfare.
Gender ideology is violent in a way that is probably similar to what you meant by labelling my characterization of slavery violent and declaring war. They use terminology like "deadname" to refer to a person's birthname, to signal to adherents to their faith that it is appropriate to kill oneself if someone calls them by the name they're used to referring to them as. They wield suicide to force guilt onto those who don't agree with their perception of reality, bypassing reason in favor conquering through fear, as an Islamic terrorist wields fear as a weapon. So long as gender dysphoria is understood primarily through emotion, rather than logic, more and more people will be unwittingly suckered into supporting a lifestyle which is associated with suicide. They bomb people figuratively, and literally kill themselves to do it.
I feel your angst and understand your ideas. Emotion and rationality are both important aspects of humanity. Do you merely wish to carry on, or do you intend to put in the hard introspective work necessary to avert tragedy and allow democracy to survive?
“In what way have I ‘vanished’ slavery, and how is that violent?
My use of the word “violence” was satiric, as you commit the same metaphorical fallacy, in stretching the application of the word “slavery” beyond all discrete, definitive, and meaningful bounds as do people who regularly apply the word “violence” to that which they disfavor but that is not violence by any common understanding of the word.
I am writing on this Substack specifically in response to the particular demagogic, authoritarian threat of Trumpism. That is American Samizdat’s reason for being. It is not a playground for general culture war complaint and argument or anyone’s pet social concerns. I won’t let discussion be detoured in that way.
“Do you merely wish to carry on, or do you intend to put in the hard introspective work necessary to avert tragedy and allow democracy to survive?”
If you have read me and wonder whether I put in “the hard introspective work,” you are clearly reading the wrong writer for you.
Ah, but your Substack describes itself as about literature, culture, and all things human, a renascent light against the darkness. If you actually only wish to respond to the demogogic, authoritarian threat that Trump poses, while closing yourself off to "all things human", is your heart really in beating this threat?
Your thoughts here remind me of a complaint about Trump:
"people who regularly apply the word 'violence' to that which they disfavor but that is not violence by any common understanding of the word"
E. Jean Carroll sued Trump for defamation after he told people he was not found guilty of raping her. This is technically true, as he was only found liable for sexual abuse.
[From Wikipedia:] Analyzing Trump's arguments, Kaplan found that Trump "misinterprets the jury's verdict", as in actuality, the "proof convincingly established, and the jury implicitly found, that Mr. Trump deliberately and forcibly penetrated Ms. Carroll's vagina with his fingers, causing immediate pain and long lasting emotional and psychological harm". Kaplan affirmed that Trump had raped Carroll according to the common meaning of the word[d] and ruled against altering the award amount.
I would argue that the people accusing Trump of being an adjudicated rapist are applying the word "rape" to an act which they disfavor but which is not the common understanding of the word, much like our discussion of the word "violence". Coincidentally, I was also digitally penetrated in 1996, like Miss Carroll, and my abuser was charged with a misdemeanor, though I never got millions of dollars for it. I always understood myself as being molested, but according to Judge Kaplan and Democrats, I was actually raped.
You must try to understand, many people aren't voting for Trump so much as they are voting against Democrats, their excesses and lack of introspection, like this inclination to exaggerate sexual violence for political purposes. Most survivors don't have the option to sue people for millions of dollars, but we might actually be able to get somewhere on the issue of sexual violence if there was more open discussion. Instead people like you brush off my complaints as "pet social concerns". Tut tut, Mr. Adler.
You're not paying attention. I have two Substacks. This one is labeled and advertised within it under the heading of American Samizdat. You've quoted the mission of Homo Vitruvius. Even there, I am the writer, I choose the topic, such as that word may apply to more creative work, and I entertain in response engagement on that topic. Neither is a blog, and there are no open threads as you continue to try to establish in your comments.
Beyond that, as I have often clarified over the past nine years, I don't engage Trump supporters in argument, any more than I would supporters, defenders, or rationalizers of other corrupt and cruel demagogues. I have no exalted estimation of my persuasive powers to believe I can accomplish the repulsed moral rejection of him that more than nine years of his foul and offensive person have not produced in you. I think it even less likely with someone offering the kind of sinuous ideation and argument you do as expression of so misguided a "both-sides, won't vote" ideological transformation as you originally described to me.
I've made one exception to that practice, and that is all. That's why I stopped responding to you on Notes and will again. You will need to find some other companionable interlocutor through that darkness.
Methinks you're not actually interested in open discourse, the bedrock of a healthy democracy. Is American Samizdat's mission to screech about Trump (in an admittedly articulate and historically considerate way) and not consider what it might actually take to keep the worst qualities he represents from taking hold? If so, you are a mirror of Trump supporters. In good faith, I responded to certain statements you made in this post, and you've chosen to cast my deliberations as unworthy of your consideration. You are exhibiting such blind, prejudiced, unreasoning allegiance to hating Trump that you cannot comprehend the deep suffering and disillusionment with Democrats which form the basis of his support. Your dismissive, reactionary response to my "pet social concerns" is not so different from the crude denigration of discourse you claim to abhor.
I'm not a Trump supporter. I voted for Joe Biden and Hilary Clinton, and I was once chastised for taping Obama posters all over my high school. Things have gotten bad enough since that I may not even be alive come November, much less be able to vote. I desperately need people to be able to compromise, and I'm focusing on you right now because I recognize your intelligence and drive. Also, you first came into my purview with a Note in response to gay and trans supporters worried about what another Trump presidency would mean for them. Do you think protecting these communities means dismissing open discourse around sexuality and gender?
I'm intimately familiar with the Yeats poem you referenced, by the way. This very poem has been at the center of my existence for four years now.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle
Do you intend to stay embedded in this nightmare? If so, continue to dismiss my concerns as irrelevant to your mission. You are not behaving as the light in the darkness you claim to be. Do you see how you both lack conviction and are full of passionate intensity?
I'd forgotten the origin of the word partisan! This morning I am energized as i believe the chances of defeating Trump have increased significantly. But as your piece points out, we must take nothing for granted and understand that we are the agents of our own destiny.
That we are, David. There's no one coming to rescue us bit ourselves. I'm energized after this weekend too.
History, indeed, will be the judge. I think this essay is brilliant, Jay!
Thank you, Mary. I'm feeling a lot more optimistic in the last 24 hours that democracy will get to judge first.
So much depends upon . . . a definition. Great piece once again, Jay.
I always find etomologies fascinating, as word usage and meanings are ever changing. "Partisan" is one of those words that is used so often today that few think about its defining characteristics, that is, “one exhibiting blind, prejudiced, and unreasoning allegiance.”
Freisler: Divine justice indeed. Makes me wonder what might be in store for the MAGA-ite himself.
Not just with language, Maureen -- a longstanding practice for a literary person -- I more and more look to the origins of things for insight into their essence.
I'm afraid I'm long past hoping divine justice is divine rather than random. But I'll take it when it comes.
So Jay—with your highly intellectual take on the current situation—and your erudite description of the word partisan—my question to you is: do you consider yourself partisan?
Dee, I think you must know the answer to that question, so I'll pose a different one to you. Do you think I'm a person "exhibiting blind, prejudiced, and unreasoning allegiance"?
I do not—but you did pull the “especially” part of the definition rather than the simpler core of it as: “firm adherent of a party, faction, cause, or person.”
In that simpler part of the definition you might qualify.
That said—I do not think the lines are clear in today’s World—and I do think that many intellectuals mask their partisanship with the thoroughness of their side of the discussion. I know that I’m guilty of it from time to time.
As I’ve said to you often before—I firmly believe they’re all weasels—and many of us get too caught up in presenting a reasonable argument as to why we’re picking one lesser evil.
Do you think the constant lies fed to us for years by those in the know—including the VP—about Biden’s real condition—are any less egregious than Trump’s constant mistruths?
“I do not—but you did pull the “especially” part of the definition rather than the simpler core of it as: “firm adherent of a party, faction, cause, or person.”
In that simpler part of the definition you might qualify.”
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Rather than “pull” a part of the definition, I highlighted for brevity the clearest part of it. Do you think they’re two different definitions – they’re presented as one – or two aspects of the same phenomenon? Why do I say the part I didn’t quote is less clear? For the very reason, you think I might qualify as a partisan based on it. It references adherence to “party, faction, cause, or person.” It doesn’t include *principles* or *ideas* -- adherence to which instead of “party, faction, cause, or person” is what enables a person to break from them. That’s a very meaningful distinction – ideas and principles vs party, faction, cause, or person.
Maybe another reason you might mistake me for a partisan – to use terms from this essay – is the intensity and passion it seems I bring to this issue. But in this case, those qualities are founded in ideas and principles that I make very clear every time I write about Trump.
I do note that you hedged your opinion with “might.” One reason you might have done that is that you really don’t know a lot about the range or history of my political opinions beside my opposition to Trump. If you did, you wouldn’t entertain that suggestion about me.
I imagine you think I might qualify as a Democratic partisan, maybe a liberal one, but I have departed from a variety of liberal or progressive or Democratic positions over my life. Rather than run through a list, I’ll simply say that I have very little regard for George W. Bush, yet I made it very clear to conservative friends who abhorred Trump in 2016 that they needed to voted for Clinton because if it were my only choice I’d for Bush over Trump. I have little more regard for Mitt Romney, but if he were the alternative, I’d vote for him to keep Trump from power. I have a lot more regard for Liz Cheney – with whom I agree about almost nothing but democracy and the rule of law. I have that greater regard for her because she has more strength of character than Bush or Romney combined in their wildest dreams. I would vote for her to keep Trump from power because I trust that, while I’d oppose almost all of her policies, she would uphold and defend our form of government.
I’m sorry to upend your thinking about me, Dee, but I’m no partisan. I, like many others – I’m not special in this way and I’m only talking about myself because you made it about me – live my life according to well considered beliefs and principles, and it is those principles that guide my fervent opposition to Trump, not partisanship.
But you went on.
“That said—I do not think the lines are clear in today’s World—and I do think that many intellectuals mask their partisanship with the thoroughness of their side of the discussion.”
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Sorry, that’s a cop out. There are many complex, grey areas in life. Trump doesn’t live in the same country as any of them.
And “intellectuals mask their partisanship with the thoroughness of their side of the discussion”? Do you really want to argue that it’s bad to discuss an issue too thoroughly? Or is that the thoroughness complicates a simpler, more settled view you’re more comfortable sticking to?
“As I’ve said to you often before—I firmly believe they’re all weasels—and many of us get too caught up in presenting a reasonable argument as to why we’re picking one lesser evil.”
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Another cop out, the greatest of all I’m afraid. “They’re all weasels,” Everybody’s a crook” etc, etc. is an evasion of hard thinking about the world and of responsibility. We’re all fallen, we’re all sinners – stipulated. But some of us much more than others. Some of us are actually bad, and those of us who aren’t need to make the necessary discriminations. It’s our responsibility.
“Do you think the constant lies fed to us for years by those in the know—including the VP—about Biden’s real condition—are any less egregious than Trump’s constant mistruths?”
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The last time we discussed these issues – also when my own opining apparently provoked you enough – you voiced belief in some conspiracy that “they” were creating the crisis around Biden as part of *their* plan to install Michele Obama as the candidate at the convention.
Dee, are we close enough to that obviously not having been the case for you to acknowledge it? And when I challenged you on believing such a conspiratorial fantasy, you said you hadn’t seen any basis for not believing it. I pointed out this was contrary to logic, that logic requires we have good evidence and reason *to* believe things. We can believe anything in the world if we insist that they be proven *not to be true* before we stop believing them.
And now you want to believe a conspiracy about Biden’s “condition” AND you want to argue that such a conspiracy of lies (like the cloaking of Woodrow Wilson’s condition after a stroke, and FDR’s real health status, and JFK’s) is the equivalent of Trump’s behavior. In each of those cases, you want to argue that an isolated element, not malevolent, is equivalent to the full, almost immeasurable range of Trumps’s dishonesty, corruption, and cruelty over a lifetime, let alone his years in political life. Well, that is how one gets to “everyone’s a crook,” but it’s nonsense.
But more, Dee, you have no factual basis at all for claiming a conspiracy of “constant lies fed to us for years by those in the know” about Biden’s “condition.” Clearly, he has aged, growing more physically frail, slower of wit and response – sometimes. Not a good look for the superficiality of a presidential campaign, a very different matter from governing. But be that as it may, you have no evidence for making that conspiratorial claim at all, nothing but a willingness to believe it based on a particular world view you developed listening to the most untrustworthy, biased and – we end where we began – partisan sources, who have been making up those claims as part of the Trumpist presidential campaign.
That last time we spoke, you said you were no Trumper, but that against Biden, you were going to have to vote for Trump.
Yet from all I hear from you, you share the political world view of a Trumper. You repeat the Trump line about Democrats, about Biden, about the corruption of the country and government and justice system. You repeat the conspiracy theories. How are you not a Trumper?
Well, now, it isn’t Biden, of whom you were brought to think so badly, who is running against Trump. Now it looks like it’s going to be Harris. What about now?
Jay I love the engagement and I’m certainly open minded enough to consider your viewpoint—always have been. I didn’t make this about you—it is about you. It’s your essay. Everything you write is through your eyes—as much as you’d like to present your well-thought out opinions as evidentiary fact. ☺️
Thanks for laying out some of your political history. I certainly did not know any of it except from your wonderful historical essays about your family. And yes—I’m guilty of making assumptions just like everyone else.
Here’s what I believe to be true in our current political environment. You call it a cop out—that may be—but it doesn’t negate the truth of it.
Biden family is corrupt and has been selling political favor for decades. Anyone practicing for their entire lifetime and rising to the top of an obviously corrupt system would be by simple deduction—also corrupt.
Trump is a lout and also corrupt. By the same measure you don’t rise to the top of a corrupt NYC real estate development world without dirtying your hands and your soul.
As for Kamala I believe she’s a vapid fraud. Again by deduction—climbing (sleeping?) her way to the top in the most politically manipulated city and state in the union.
No one will save our democracy from the political and bureaucratic state that’s destroying it until we have term limits for every elected official and completely eliminate dark money and corporate lobbyists.
They’re all full of shit and arguing about which one is marginally better than another is like arguing for preferred flavors of spoiled yogurt.
Jay—respect for you, your powerful writing, and for our dialogue. I always learn something.
Peace.
And peace unto you, as my dear departed high school buddy, Alan, liked to say, but we’re not done yet, Dee. You keep saying these things.
“I didn’t make this about you—it is about you. It’s your essay. Everything you write is through your eyes—as much as you’d like to present your well-thought out opinions as evidentiary fact.”
You’re confused. I exist in the world. You exist in the world. Others exist in the world. There is this phenomenon we call “world” that is not any of us, that exists independently of any of us. It embraces a “world” of things, including ideas. I wrote about ideas in the world, not myself. When I write about my family and father, then I am making it about myself. Even if I turned out to be weak and unable to live up the standards I articulate, even if I turned out to be a hypocrite, it would have no bearing on the arguments I make, which will stand or fall on their logical and empirically supported reasoning, not on me as an individual person. What I am referring to are also principles, established in logic, and there are names for the logical fallacies of confusing these matters.
“Here’s what I believe to be true in our current political environment. You call it a cop out—that may be—but it doesn’t negate the truth of it.”
This is a logical contradiction. A cop out is an evasion. What I’m calling a cop out is an evasion of the careful evidence gathering and reasoning to determine what may actually be true rather than what you’re inclined to believe. If it is a cop out, it can’t be true because you’re refusing to do the work that might determine the truth. For instance,
“Here’s what I believe to be true in our current political environment. . ..
Biden family is corrupt and has been selling political favor for decades. Anyone practicing for their entire lifetime and rising to the top of an obviously corrupt system would be by simple deduction—also corrupt.”
Yes, it is a simple deduction. It’s also a simplistic deduction. In logical terms an “unsound deduction.’ You have your explicit conclusion and one explicit premise and one implicit premise of a categorical syllogism:
MINOR PREMISE (implicit): Joe Biden (family) has been practicing politics in a corrupt system an entire lifetime.
MAJOR PREMISE: Anyone (all people) practicing for their entire lifetime and rising to the top of an obviously corrupt system is corrupt.
CONCLUSION: Joe Biden (family) is corrupt.
This is a valid conclusion, but it is *unsound*, meaning it does not accurately describe the world. It does not accurately describe the world because its premises offer sweeping generalizations about the world that are untrue precisely for the reason I have said you are copping out: rather than do the hard work of gathering facts and information that support your claims – and evaluating the accuracy and worth of what others present to you as facts – and then the hard work of judgmental discrimination among, for instance, the wide range of degrees by which a person may be good and honest in this life and not, you take the easy route of casting a net that embraces everyone.
All that you say about politics after these comments is flawed in the same way. You wrote that I “like to present your well-thought out opinions as evidentiary fact.” No, Dee. The difficulty is that you don’t distinguish between them. I know what an evidentiary fact is. I know what an opinion is. I know the difference between “mere” or “personal” or unsupported opinion and informed and reasoned opinion – the informed part being so on the basis of evidence. If you’d like to comb through my essays for where I discriminate or fail to between “fact” and reasoned opinion about the *truth*, or fail to, I welcome it.
The accusations you make about Joe Biden are entirely unsupported. They do no more than repeat the lies Trumpists have been telling about him for years now. He’s been in public life for 52 years. Where’s the *factual* history of corruption over those five decades? Can you present it? I can present it about Trump. I don’t mean my low opinion of Trump – I mean the facts, the evidence of his lifelong corruption and dishonesty. They are voluminous.
“As for Kamala I believe she’s a vapid fraud. Again by deduction—climbing (sleeping?) her way to the top in the most politically manipulated city and state in the union.”
The same ill-reasoned (and ill-willed) kind of claim that just repeats Trumpist misogyny and meanness. When was the last time you attacked a male political figure based in any part on his sexual-romantic history (factual or not)? The Dee I’ve come to know a little seems too good a man to be doing that. And you offer sexual inuendo about a person running now for office against DONALD TRUMP?
Dee, you say you learn something each time you read me or we have an exchange. Thank you for that. If it’s true, then I implore you – I do, it’s that important – to pause to consider what you’ve come by developed habit to believe and accept as so against what you really know, in what is a more complicated world than broad generalizations can represent.
>Would an appropriate resolution to avoid Civil War have been a moderate, both sides proposal of slavery on Saturdays only and the granting of Southern States’ right to secede — but only in their dreams — in order to make everyone equally unhappy?
The American Civil War was a violent, incomplete resolution to a certain form of slavery. Slavery-in-all-but-name remains commonplace, maintained by illusions of choice and opportunity.
>But in the twenty-first century, who outstrips for passionate intensity and demonstrated conviction the Islamist suicide-bomber fanatic?
That would be the rainbow sex cult, especially purveyors of gender ideology, who use suicidal death threats, censorship, and other forms of manipulation to force their religious views on sexuality and gender. They are, as you so eloquently put it:
>charlatan salesman that [...] divides people even from their own best interests, and, dividing them from each other, from their own best selves.
To this:
>One simply cannot be “Christian” and support Donald Trump.
Christians operate under a flawed assumption that sins ("broken relationships") can be easily forgiven, so long as one is able to admit they sinned in the first place. But Christian supporters of Trump fail to deeply examine the causes and effects of "sin", and thus fail to demand meaningful atonement from demogogues like Trump. This is because the root of their rabid disagreement are matters of sex and love, which are notoriously difficult to think or speak about rationally.
>Who wants to imagine the pathetic or tragic future of a United States in the Twenty-First Century that has lost its democracy?
I feel your angst. Have you considered that American democracy in its current form, for all its merits, is insufficient to avert tragedy?
“The American Civil War was a violent, incomplete resolution to a certain form of slavery. Slavery-in-all-but-name remains commonplace, maintained by illusions of choice and opportunity.”
I consider your expansive understanding of slavery, to the point of vanishing a violence. I must, therefore, declare war.
“>But in the twenty-first century, who outstrips for passionate intensity and demonstrated conviction the Islamist suicide-bomber fanatic?
“That would be the rainbow sex cult, especially purveyors of gender ideology, who use suicidal death threats, censorship, and other forms of manipulation to force their religious views on sexuality and gender.”
Local news fails me again: I’ve missed the reports of rainbow sex cult gender ideology suicide bombers.
“I feel your angst. Have you considered that American democracy in its current form, for all its merits, is insufficient to avert tragedy?”
Don’t feel my angst; understand the ideas. I have considered that humanity in any form is insufficient to avert tragedy. We carry on.
In what way have I "vanished" slavery, and how is that violent?
Many "freed" slaves faced greater violence and hardship in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, and crushing inequality persists, not just for the descendants of black slaves. Is any modern child growing up within the limiting effects of poverty, with all its attendant traumas, truly free? Upwards social mobility (pulling one's self up by their bootstraps) is rare, and this is just one of many examples of the illusion of choice within our culture. Extreme economic inequality is a legal form of slavery, a blatant immorality which must be fixed, but not through violent warfare.
Gender ideology is violent in a way that is probably similar to what you meant by labelling my characterization of slavery violent and declaring war. They use terminology like "deadname" to refer to a person's birthname, to signal to adherents to their faith that it is appropriate to kill oneself if someone calls them by the name they're used to referring to them as. They wield suicide to force guilt onto those who don't agree with their perception of reality, bypassing reason in favor conquering through fear, as an Islamic terrorist wields fear as a weapon. So long as gender dysphoria is understood primarily through emotion, rather than logic, more and more people will be unwittingly suckered into supporting a lifestyle which is associated with suicide. They bomb people figuratively, and literally kill themselves to do it.
I feel your angst and understand your ideas. Emotion and rationality are both important aspects of humanity. Do you merely wish to carry on, or do you intend to put in the hard introspective work necessary to avert tragedy and allow democracy to survive?
“In what way have I ‘vanished’ slavery, and how is that violent?
My use of the word “violence” was satiric, as you commit the same metaphorical fallacy, in stretching the application of the word “slavery” beyond all discrete, definitive, and meaningful bounds as do people who regularly apply the word “violence” to that which they disfavor but that is not violence by any common understanding of the word.
I am writing on this Substack specifically in response to the particular demagogic, authoritarian threat of Trumpism. That is American Samizdat’s reason for being. It is not a playground for general culture war complaint and argument or anyone’s pet social concerns. I won’t let discussion be detoured in that way.
“Do you merely wish to carry on, or do you intend to put in the hard introspective work necessary to avert tragedy and allow democracy to survive?”
If you have read me and wonder whether I put in “the hard introspective work,” you are clearly reading the wrong writer for you.
Ah, but your Substack describes itself as about literature, culture, and all things human, a renascent light against the darkness. If you actually only wish to respond to the demogogic, authoritarian threat that Trump poses, while closing yourself off to "all things human", is your heart really in beating this threat?
Your thoughts here remind me of a complaint about Trump:
"people who regularly apply the word 'violence' to that which they disfavor but that is not violence by any common understanding of the word"
E. Jean Carroll sued Trump for defamation after he told people he was not found guilty of raping her. This is technically true, as he was only found liable for sexual abuse.
[From Wikipedia:] Analyzing Trump's arguments, Kaplan found that Trump "misinterprets the jury's verdict", as in actuality, the "proof convincingly established, and the jury implicitly found, that Mr. Trump deliberately and forcibly penetrated Ms. Carroll's vagina with his fingers, causing immediate pain and long lasting emotional and psychological harm". Kaplan affirmed that Trump had raped Carroll according to the common meaning of the word[d] and ruled against altering the award amount.
I would argue that the people accusing Trump of being an adjudicated rapist are applying the word "rape" to an act which they disfavor but which is not the common understanding of the word, much like our discussion of the word "violence". Coincidentally, I was also digitally penetrated in 1996, like Miss Carroll, and my abuser was charged with a misdemeanor, though I never got millions of dollars for it. I always understood myself as being molested, but according to Judge Kaplan and Democrats, I was actually raped.
You must try to understand, many people aren't voting for Trump so much as they are voting against Democrats, their excesses and lack of introspection, like this inclination to exaggerate sexual violence for political purposes. Most survivors don't have the option to sue people for millions of dollars, but we might actually be able to get somewhere on the issue of sexual violence if there was more open discussion. Instead people like you brush off my complaints as "pet social concerns". Tut tut, Mr. Adler.
You're not paying attention. I have two Substacks. This one is labeled and advertised within it under the heading of American Samizdat. You've quoted the mission of Homo Vitruvius. Even there, I am the writer, I choose the topic, such as that word may apply to more creative work, and I entertain in response engagement on that topic. Neither is a blog, and there are no open threads as you continue to try to establish in your comments.
Beyond that, as I have often clarified over the past nine years, I don't engage Trump supporters in argument, any more than I would supporters, defenders, or rationalizers of other corrupt and cruel demagogues. I have no exalted estimation of my persuasive powers to believe I can accomplish the repulsed moral rejection of him that more than nine years of his foul and offensive person have not produced in you. I think it even less likely with someone offering the kind of sinuous ideation and argument you do as expression of so misguided a "both-sides, won't vote" ideological transformation as you originally described to me.
I've made one exception to that practice, and that is all. That's why I stopped responding to you on Notes and will again. You will need to find some other companionable interlocutor through that darkness.
Methinks you're not actually interested in open discourse, the bedrock of a healthy democracy. Is American Samizdat's mission to screech about Trump (in an admittedly articulate and historically considerate way) and not consider what it might actually take to keep the worst qualities he represents from taking hold? If so, you are a mirror of Trump supporters. In good faith, I responded to certain statements you made in this post, and you've chosen to cast my deliberations as unworthy of your consideration. You are exhibiting such blind, prejudiced, unreasoning allegiance to hating Trump that you cannot comprehend the deep suffering and disillusionment with Democrats which form the basis of his support. Your dismissive, reactionary response to my "pet social concerns" is not so different from the crude denigration of discourse you claim to abhor.
I'm not a Trump supporter. I voted for Joe Biden and Hilary Clinton, and I was once chastised for taping Obama posters all over my high school. Things have gotten bad enough since that I may not even be alive come November, much less be able to vote. I desperately need people to be able to compromise, and I'm focusing on you right now because I recognize your intelligence and drive. Also, you first came into my purview with a Note in response to gay and trans supporters worried about what another Trump presidency would mean for them. Do you think protecting these communities means dismissing open discourse around sexuality and gender?
I'm intimately familiar with the Yeats poem you referenced, by the way. This very poem has been at the center of my existence for four years now.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle
Do you intend to stay embedded in this nightmare? If so, continue to dismiss my concerns as irrelevant to your mission. You are not behaving as the light in the darkness you claim to be. Do you see how you both lack conviction and are full of passionate intensity?