Rising Ethics Alarms comment star Zoltar Speaks! has weighed in with a passionate and perceptive comment inspired my recent overview of the ethical bankruptcy among the public’s current top choices to be our next President. Most commentators, even partisan ones, have become sensitive to what ZS describes, though they describe it in differing ways. Here’s a fascinating post on City Journal, giving Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Kennedy’s hagiographer and once influential liberal/Democratic historian credit for predicting the phenomenon:
“Both lament and warning, “The Disuniting of America” reflected a Schlesinger disconcerted by the rise, within overwhelmingly liberal academia, of multiculturalism and political correctness, the linked solvents of American identity. …Trump is both a reaction to and expression of liberal delusions. Schlesinger’s fears have largely come to pass; we’ve become what he called a “quarrelsome spatter of enclaves.” Schlesinger was too much a part of the elite to imagine that the class he always thought of as representing the best of the future would come to be despised by a broad swath of Americans for its incompetence and ineffectuality. But what Schlesinger saw on the horizon seems to have arrived, with no sign of abating: we are in the midst of a soft civil war.”
Government, especially democratic government, relies on trust. Nixon and Watergate exacerbated the decline in trust created by the Vietnam War, then Clinton betrayed the dignity and image of his office to make almost any conduct by the President not just imaginable, but defensible. Sam Donaldson famously said that Clinton would have to resign if the allegation about Monica were true, and he had lied. Sam was right under previous rules, and a President who cared more about the country’s trust than himself would have done as Donaldson predicted.
Next came the completely random catastrophe of the tied 2000 election. Democrats, to their undying shame, employed it as a wedge, and to insist that the election had been stolen, a practice I described at the time as picking at the connective threads of the tapestry of our society. 9-11 was used to suggest that our government would murder its own people; Katrina was used to suggest that our government would allow black people to die because they were black. Bush’s administration blundered into a war, and then into a near-depression—in past generations, these would both be attributed to miscalculations. But the tapestry, as I warned, was unraveling. Now those mistakes were being seen as deliberate, sinister.Then came Obama, once promising hope and harmony, who has deliberately exacerbated divisions and distrust to build a political firewall around his own incompetence. Public trust in government, before the Vietnam protests, was at 73%; it is below 25% today. Of course it is. The question is: Now what?
Here is Zoltar Speaks! in his Comment of the Day on the post, Ethics Update: The Frontrunners:
Do you ever get the feeling from the political front-runners in this campaign that this election is primarily being steered towards the elimination of our current political system in favor of something else?
Do you ever get the feeling that illogical social chaos and division among the people is becoming more and more prevalent across the United States and our leaders don’t seem to be spending any of their political capital to slow the trend, instead what we see is rhetoric from our leaders and potential leaders that seems to support illogical social chaos and division among the people?
Some may say that trends, such as these, have always been there and it’s all just typical election season political propaganda; I disagree! I’ve been around for quite a while and I see that the trend is much more wide spread and “permanent” than any political season trend can explain. The trend is showing us that the core things that make us who we have been, who we currently are, and who we have the potential to be are being manipulated by the destruction of root moral character.
When I was young I had hope for the future, my hopes for future generations, my children and grandchildren, are being squelched; is that what our leaders want?
Do our leaders, and future leaders, see chaos as a method of pushing them to the top of the political ladder?
Has acquiring of the goal of individual/party political supremacy superseded or completely replaced the goal to serve the people?
Have the people become the tool of the politicians instead of the politicians being the tool of the people?
Is anyone else feeling the crushing of “the people” under the weight of our continuously expanding government?
Division might temporarily make some of us feel stronger than those we oppose, but in the end, division will destroy the initial reason that drove the founding fathers to structured our nation in the manner in which they did; our freedoms rest on the heavy laden shoulders that We the People are better together than we are apart.
Vote for unity not division.
Ethics Alarms 
I would love to vote for unity. Who is offering it?
I will say one of my current rules of thumb is “plays well with others.” So my choice in the presidential run has narrowed. It’s a bit harder to judge that kindergarten rating for local races.
So true.
[You are not allowed to read or comment on this, Zoltar, be warned].
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Zoltar Spake Thus: “Do you ever get the feeling from the political front-runners in this campaign that this election is primarily being steered towards the elimination of our current political system in favor of something else?”
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That is an interesting idea. One wonders if you mean some sort of postwar Communist conspiracy? I’ve watched some John Birch Society-related videos of ex-communists in the 50s and 60s describing how the subversion of political systems is rationally undertaken.
Do you mean though some conscious ‘junta’ operating behind the scenes? Like an ‘international corporate conspiracy’? Or perhaps the same ones that pulled off 9/11? (Aliens, the Israelis, the Americans, or perhaps a joint op?)
A world ruled by the Communist Chinese and the nullification of ‘politics’ as we know it is a distressing thing to consider. Is that what you mean?
In Venezuela Hugo Chavez became a local hero when he attempted a coup. But nearly the entire population hated the government at that time and so he slipped in as it were and became a political Robin Hood. He drove Venezuela into the ground … yet they still love him. That is hard to explain.
But as I said elsewhere I think that populism of our current variety is itself a madness.
But the question is a very good one. How to interpret the present?
Isn’t this the essence of all your questions? How to interpret?
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Zoltar Spake Thus: “Do you ever get the feeling that illogical social chaos and division among the people is becoming more and more prevalent across the United States and our leaders don’t seem to be spending any of their political capital to slow the trend, instead what we see is rhetoric from our leaders and potential leaders that seems to support illogical social chaos and division among the people?”
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Did you ever get the impression that the idea of tossing very different people all together into a ‘propositional nation’ is in itself to create disunity?
Did you stop to consider the possibility that ‘the people’ do not want ‘unity’ and that perhaps they are incapable of it? But that thought itself is ‘illegal’ and also ‘immoral’ and so it is pushed down? But that pushing down a deep sentiment only causes it to twist and turn internally and to get ugly?
Have you considered that no one has even the slightest idea how to confront such a massive – a civilisational – problem except to turn to tired and overused rhetoric about ‘equality’ and ‘diversity’ that is, just by scratching a little at its surface, an imposition into people’s desired social life? Have you asked Who is behind the imposition of such a situation? And what philosophical ideas inform them?
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Zoltar Spake Thus: “Some may say that trends, such as these, have always been there and it’s all just typical election season political propaganda; I disagree! I’ve been around for quite a while and I see that the trend is much more wide spread and “permanent” than any political season trend can explain. The trend is showing us that the core things that make us who we have been, who we currently are, and who we have the potential to be are being manipulated by the destruction of root moral character.”
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Some would suggest that what you have written just above is in fact a very knotty statement that is also a form of begging the question. But have you considered that the US of A, since around the time of the First War, has been intensely bombarded with straight propaganda from all sides and from all angles? But especially from the so-called ‘public relations sector’. And has it occurred to you that a propagandised culture, ipso facto, is one that has been trained to RESPOND to propaganda and not to be able to ‘think freely’? And that after about 100 years of this, and with much else, the ‘true’ fabric of the Nation and what it was/might have been/should have been, has been lost? And that only a great upheaval can restore it? But no one has any idea at all how that will come about?
The last sentence places you pretty soundly right on the battlefield of the Culture Wars, doesn’t it? Do you incline to Dewey … or to Francis Schaefer?
Was it ‘root moral character’ that propelled our Great Nation to invade Iraq? Or do you rather mean that we have stopped helping little old ladies to cross the street?
If you REALLY wanted to delve into ethics questions, and if you REALLY wanted to open the conversation to full and careful analysis, it would be a darned interesting but excruciatingly difficult – and demanding – conversation. I suggest that we do not know how to broach 80% of the content of that conversation. (And I say that as one inclined to the Right and to radical conservatism).
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Zoltar Spake Thus: “When I was young I had hope for the future, my hopes for future generations, my children and grandchildren, are being squelched; is that what our leaders want?”
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Another knotty statement. Some might say: “You got sold down the river, son.” Others that corruption entered in (those post WW1 years seem to reveal a lot, if James Agee can be trusted). Others that neo-imperialist aims, and simply unreal perversion by capitalistic craving undermined ‘morality’ as it should be understood. Take your pick, put them in the ring of conversational culture, and watch them kill each other. (And post the vid to Twitter for the whole wide world to see.)
Good luck even articulating the questions. I am young enough that my own brain starts to smoke just thinking about them.
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Zoltar Spake Thus: “Have the people become the tool of the politicians instead of the politicians being the tool of the people?”
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Have you considered the possibility that this is not really the right question? ‘The people’ in and of themselves have nearly no capacity to ‘locate themselves’. Nor could they even be expected to offer instruction or guidance into how to run the show, given the magnitude of the ‘show’. The powers that run ‘the show’ are interwoven structurally in such a way that, as ‘the medium is the message’, so the nation in a ‘meta’ sense is an entity significantly out of the control of ‘the people’.
What would Walter Lippmann have recommended? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Lippmann
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Zoltar Spake Thus: “Division might temporarily make some of us feel stronger than those we oppose, but in the end, division will destroy the initial reason that drove the founding fathers to structure our nation in the manner in which they did; our freedoms rest on the heavy laden shoulders that We the People are better together than we are apart.”
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I’d suggest that this statement, though admirable sentimentally, fails to see clearly what ‘is really happening’ and that crisis is our destiny.
If anything therefor it is that division has to augment. Moreover (in my sense of things) it IS augmenting and will continue to augment. These things don’t just stop of their own accord. Is it ‘youthful pessimism’ speaking? Or something even darker?
The world of ‘Founding Fathers’ has been toppled. We live in a world with so little relationship to that, that that turn of phrase is nearly absurd. (Three thats there, I know, yet it works somehow).
Well, there you have my attempt to answer your questions. I’ll take my answers off the air.
Perhaps it’s a product of my own bias, seeing things not as they are, but through a glass, darkly – but I didn’t think of ICC (International Communist Conspiracy) nor EOZ (Elders of Zion), Bilderberg Group etc – I thought of an emergent property of “Malefactors of Great Wealth”, not any formally or informally organised group, just a return of the Robber Barons.
Lots of like-minded individuals with no co-ordination who happen to all be going in the same direction, greater concentration of wealth and power, and less democratisation.
Trickle-down used to work, until it was found that there was a better rate of return on investment in paying legislators to pass regulations than in plant and expansion. Those that did things the old way were eaten by the new predators.
This is to some extent a backlash against the old problem of the demagogues whipping up the mob – the malignancy of corrupted democratisation.
I fear we’ve reached an accommodation of Dystopia, where both groups – I won’t call them “sides” as their interests coincide, only their methods differ – have carved out their territory, and are now in some form of symbiosis. Aristos and Committee of Public Safety.
To quote Lord Macauley
“Horatius,” quoth the Consul,
“As thou sayest so let it be,”
And straight against that great array
Went forth the dauntless three.
For Romans in Rome’s quarrel
Spared neither land nor gold,
Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life,
In the brave days of old.
Then none was for a party—
Then all were for the state;
Then the great man helped the poor,
And the poor man loved the great;
Then lands were fairly portioned!
Then spoils were fairly sold:
The Romans were like brothers
In the brave days of old.
Now Roman is to Roman
More hateful than a foe,
And the tribunes beard the high,
And the fathers grind the low.
As we wax hot in faction,
In battle we wax cold;
Wherefore men fight not as they fought
In the brave days of old.
First Macauley sighting on Ethics Alarms!
Hopefully not the last.
I have often thought it worth bringing out his “special pleading OK in a good cause” tendencies, e.g. in Civil Disabilities of the Jews he pooh poohs rather than addressing someone’s fear that a Jewish franchise could lead to a Zionist lobby. Oh, and it would give people a chance to spell his name correctly, too.
Well spake, Zoltar! Great comment – your questions are most thoughtful and thought-provoking.
I am definitely alarmed at the size, reach, and seeming irreversibility in (let alone controllability of) growth of federal officials’ powers.
I cannot envision a way that those powers, those officials, can be reined-in (either under their own power, that is to say, voluntarily, or involuntarily under “externally applied” power) to re-constitute a truly limited government of, by, and for a people who are truly capable of self-governance, without everyone suffering the most violent, universally impoverishing mass upheaval.
The “no-choice” seems ever more unavoidably either implosion or explosion. When the “poor” have nothing more to lose, the rich have everything and more to fear – and lose.
The second question you wrote, about “maximizing opportunities for dominance, control and exploitation, enabled by continual, serial crises and/or public perceptions of same” (my own words for my interpretation of the apparent, primary motivating strategy of leading modern political players in the U.S.), might actually be poking at a reason to hope for eventual change for the better. “Illogical chaos and division,” for political power players accustomed to – even, I dare say, “addicted to” – exploiting such, is ultimately a suicidal investment for those power players, I believe. At some point, there is an upper limit to how divided and chaotic a population can become; thus, eventually, there is an upper limit – and a point of rapidly reversing and diminishing – of the benefits such a population can provide its exploiters. Both “dying media” and “ascendant media” should note that.
In my own clumsy idea-construction, I refer now to my comment earlier this month. We Americans are just one “la-la” election away from “graduation” from “Ameri-la-la-la-rica” to “Ameri-la-la-la-la-la-rica.” When the mis-lead finally awaken fully to the sly deceptions of their mis-leaders, all hell will break loose for a time. But eventually, as surely as the human is a social creature, the truth shall be widely known, and it shall set the people free.
As mere voters in the U.S., we might currently be in a futile position to effect constructive change, insofar as electing leaders of vision and strength who can craft administrations that calm the tensions between the divided and enable progress to actual healing of the divisions. But, as more than mere voters, we have the human privilege, indeed the human right and responsibility, to make constructive change happen despite the failings of mere political parties and ideologies. I am reminded of a quote by Will Durant I saw again recently: “The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority.”
A good number of other wise and relevant sayings are attributed to Will Durant. But I’ll close instead with a hopeful quote from the movie, “Revenge of the Nerds.” This statement climaxes an allegory of the truly strong (“nerds”) uniting to overcome brutish, but truly weak, oppressors (in context of college frat-house rivalry). It should serve as fair warning to today’s leading Pied Pipers of political partisanship in the (still!) U.S. that all glory is fleeting, and that you can only fool some of the people some of the time:
“There are more of us than there are of you.”
Unfortunately, historically, Zoltar only grants wishes to burgeoning young boys and sailors’ girlfriends. It’s a boardwalk thing.