On Bullshit: Trump. Nietzsche, and Waite

I've had a very interesting discussion with my favorite reader Tom Brown-I like you other guys but too catch Tom try commenting 10 percent of his output! LOL

Tom understands my basic Trump Democrat argument.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/08/why-im-trump-democrat.html

But nevertheless, the Trump phenomenon still makes him rather nervous in some ways. And undeniably we had the recent attack of two Trump loving meatheads who attacked a homeless Hispanic man-initially Trump had little to say but his fans are passionate.

He has since repudiated violence of any form-so this is the right thing but  it was belated.

https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS608US608&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8&q=trump%20my%20fans%20are%20passionate&oq=trump%20my%20fans%20are%20passionate&aqs=chrome..69i57.6666j0j1

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/consul-homeless-man-beaten-boston-mexico-native-33224872

That is terrible and worrying though now that he says he doesn't condone it this might give others pause. Still, Tom and I have also been recently discussing Scott Sumner. Listen I've had lots of differences but the one thing I understand thanks to reading his blog and by extension other econ blogs is that correlation is not causation.

These two meatheads who invoked Trump may have found another alibi for doing the same thing without Trump.

At the end of the day they are responsible for their own actions just like James Holmes can't blame Batman

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3099671/Court-releases-theater-shooting-suspects-notebook.html

I do agree that Trump is a bullshitter. A bullshitter according to Harry Frankfurt is not the same as a lie-ie may be true or even say many true things but obscure other things that might make us conclude differently.

http://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Harry-G-Frankfurt/dp/0691122946/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1440956440&sr=8-1&keywords=henry+frankfurt+on+bullshit

I'm still not sure Sumner is never guilty of this-you can argue this is basically just framing an issue in an advantageous way for yourself.

I do find Frankfort's argument very interesting-and I ordered the book after Tom alerted me to it. It sort of makes me think of the anti-Nietzsche book of Geoff Waite.

As I say on my home page I'm a big fan of Niezsche's.

http://www.amazon.com/Thus-Spoke-Zarathustra-Everyone-Classics/dp/0140441182/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1440956330&sr=8-2&keywords=nietzsche+thus+spake+zarathustra

Here is Waite's 'decelebration'-his word- of Nietzsche. 

http://www.amazon.com/Nietzsches-Corps-Technoculture-Post-Contemporary-Interventions/dp/0822317192/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1440956404&sr=8-1&keywords=geoff+waite

Perhaps bullshitting at least in part is Waite's charge against Nietzsche-though it is a very fascinating and complex argument for which 'bullshitting; just scratches the surface. 

I think Waite would probably agree that Nietzsche is a bullshitter-though much more than just that. 

Waite's book is based on a very specific kind of moral essentialism. His main charge against Nietzsche is that he is an esoteric writer-who spoke not just to everyone inclusively but to different audiences at once. 

For Waite, it is morally self-evident that esotericism is bad. It means you have something to hide that should be shared with everyone. If you weren't up to no good you would operate solely on the exoteric realm. 

UPDATE: For an interesting primer on Waite see Ralph Dumain. 

http://www.autodidactproject.org/my/waite_esoterism_1.html

These are highly complex leftist academic arguments by their very nature. 

To be sure, even Waite admits taht there can be legitimate uses of esoteric modes of speech-he uses the extreme example of the Italian Communist philosopher's imprisonment in Fascist Italy. 

https://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/

But in principle all authors should be exoteric. I'm not sure I agree even with that-maybe some facts only reveal themselves esoterically and literally can't be expressed exoterically but I won't delve too deep into this here-it certainly needs to be on another day. 

Anyway, what has struck me is the sense that this Trump campaign really has been esoteric. 

   Furthermore, Limbaugh seems to be showing a little perceptiveness by pointing out that he had read about Trump's comments about 'blood coming out her eyes' in all the various papers-NY Times, Washington Post-etc. and he didn't notice any criticism by the 'liberal media.'

    Rush says it was just straight objective reporting with no condemnation or snark. He said he found that interesting and that no way would there be that kind of response from the LM for any other Republican making similar comments. He did say that he's not sure how to interpret this (!)

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/08/rush-limbaugh-on-know-nothing-movement.html

Rush was on to something but let it go. He just chalked it up to  the liberal news anchors being scolded by Tea Party Americans to treat Trump more fairly. 

I mean that is quite an insight: why are there so many Trump Democrats and so many liberals that aren't nearly as hostile to Trump as you would expect?

But Rush and his Tea Party friends as usual have no sense of context. So it doesn't worry them. 

And this is why in some ways I'm convinced that whether call it 'bullshit' or whatever has paradoxically been more helpful for us at getting at truth. 

"Before Donald Trump, Republican presidential candidates could deflect tough questions on immigration with vague promises to secure the border and oppose all “amnesty” for illegal immigrants."


Now there is a real debate! So in a strange sense Trump's bullshitter somewhat esoteric campaign has been very efficacious in getting us at the truth of the GOP on immigration-and all the major candidates have records that are no better than Trump's wild-eyed proposals.


And I think that Trump has been a very esoteric candidate. We don't really know what his true views and motivations are-it seems that outside of immigration he has many centrist, liberal or at least unconservative views. Yet I can honestly say I would sooner vote for him for President than Jeb, Rubio, or Walker?


For the most part the conservative Republican movement is very exoteric. You might think that W was a terrible President, one of the worst ever-as I do-and Sumner says that at least Cheney was one of the worst Vice Presidents ever.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/08/scott-sumner-dares-call-it-national.html

But we knew where W stood. There was no ambiguity. He meant what he said and said what he meant but what he meant was pretty awful mostly. If I have one candidate who says what he means and means what he says but what he's saying is awful and another candidate who seems not to really be taking what he's saying all that seriously I actually would rather take him.

Of course this might give us some real uncertainty. But Trump has said enough to show that he's in many ways very rational and understands how the world works-like when unlike Scott Walker's big talk about 'Ripping up the Iran deal on day one'-without even reading it presumably-Trump understands what the economists call the time-path problem.

Even if

1. The Obama deal is in many ways sub-optimal and if we had it to do over again we should have done differently-in this case 'been tougher'

2. We don't have it to do over again and this better deal is no longer accessible to us. So we have to work with what we have and with this new deal we have to make some kind of peace and find out how to make it better and how to make it work-as all our allies have signed on.

He shows this same understanding on healthcare too. An important point he's made is with the endless media criticism that he has no 'specifics'-which is selective anyway. I've seen no one hounding Jeb on the specifics that get him 4% GDP.

But Trump points out that it's one thing to make lots of campaign promises-but this also limits your options when you're on the ground.

He points out that when he does a business deal he doesn't come up with an essay with a first, second, and third step.

This is the problem with Mr. Smith Goes to Washington-how does he know he can fix everything as he doesn't know how it works? If I came to you and said 'I won't to be your new pilot and I have no experience whatsoever, isn't that refreshing?' you'd have a heart attack.

Apparently there's an assumption that politics is very different than this. There there is no problem of implementation-just 'Speak Truth to Power' and all will sort itself out. 

As Garry Wills says, there is a huge gulp between political activists and politicians. 

http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Conservative-Garry-Wills/dp/0385089775/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1440959267&sr=1-1&keywords=garry+wills+confessions+of+a+conservative

One reason why campaign promises are broken is that they should never have been made in the first place. Bush the Father should never have promises 'Read my lips... No new taxes!!' as it was pure pandering. 

FDR and JFK-two Presidents I hold in generally high regard-both ran on campaign promises that they didn't keep but this is a good thing as the promises themselves were wrongheaded. 

FDR ran on balancing the budget and cutting government spending (!) In the middle of the mother of all depressions he thought that was the focus. We can be grateful that he wasn't so bullheaded as to insist that he will keep this promise come hell or highwater. 

Still FDR was hardly a Keynesian and when the two meet they didn't understand each other. 

http://crookedtimber.org/2013/06/17/the-queer-personality-and-floating-mind-what-did-keynes-say-to-and-about-roosevelt-2/

http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/fdrs-evolution-thinking-keynsian

Kennedy ran against an imaginary 'missile gap' with the Soviets. 

In that sense Trump''s argument that you have to kind of play the context when you get on the ground that you can't prescribe your actions too tightly makes a lot of sense. 

But we've had a much better GOP discussion about immigration than we normally do-normally there is no discussion at all. So Trump's bullshitting and esotericism is proving strangely efficacious.

UPDATE: Speaking of the esoteric-exoteric problematic, this book is fascinating. It's the idea that Cass Sustein of the Obama Administration was trying infiltrate the 9/11 Truthers. What is interesting is that the author Griffin suggests that Sustein is esoteric-but maybe that's because he's really 'one of us'-the Truthers. So unlike Waite he thinks that an esoteric author can be on the side of angels.