PREFACE:
2400 years ago(!), in 375 BC, Plato, the Classical Greek philosopher and arguably the mainstay pillar of critical thought for the whole of subsequent western civilization, wrote
The Republic which seems to describe, in allegory, America’s failed presidency under Donald Trump. Plato wrote of a bumbling, directionless human condition resulting from farcically inept mis-leadership which Plato described as like the randomly winding journey of a ‘
Ship of Fools, captained (or cheered on from the poop deck) by a cowardly, inadequate fool’s fool.
Note the
descriptor of Plato’s Ship of Fools in the ‘Republic’ (
Book VI):
“There’s the shipowner, larger and stronger than everyone in the ship, but somewhat deaf and rather short-sighted, with a knowledge of sailing to match his eyesight.”
America, with Trump on the poop deck, flounders rudderless a-sea like Plato’s ‘Ship of Fools’.
Reflected in the light of Plato’s warning about the dangers to a democratic ship-of-state under inexpert leadership, ‘Trumpist’ America has experienced a systematic dismantling of Constitutional principles and norms - an onslaughts that started from the beginning of Trump's tenure and hasn’t lessened.
Trump’s muddling ‘mis-leadership’, has brought America finds to a 2020 state of ‘Chaos and Confusion’ - in danger of falling apart from a three pronged attack of disease, civil division and racism, and looming economic trauma.
The Trump-caused 2020 challenges facing America in it’s 240th year (1781-2020) are:
(1) an unchecked pandemic disease that already has infected one of every one-hundred Americans (25% of global infections vs America’s 5% of world population!!);
(2) an America racked internally by toxic racism and harsh political division left over from a terrible civil war that ‘de facto’ is still being fought 160 years later (1861-2020); and
(3) an about-to-happen economic collapse already set up with 30-40 million Americans out of work (though, mind you, Trump boasts this is a wonderful recovery even as states close down again as the pandemic COVID-19 disease shows us a second phase resurgence that looks to be worse than it’s first wave).
So, here we are, like a ‘ship of fools’ giddily floundering ona stormy sea. The following 15c. graphic depicts Plato’s ship-of-fools theme (attributed by some of to Albrecht Durer, the German Woodcut master)
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DISCOURSE:
Currently, America faces serious challenges to which the American presidency, Trump, like the captain of Plato’s ‘Ship of Fools, is not up to handling.
To begin with, there is the ‘Pandemic’ which America’s ‘captain’, DTrump, has managed to slough off all responsibility for even though he constantly tossed off its threat as a ‘hoax’ during the critically important initial warnings and then surfacing of the disease in America ... thus exacerbating its deadly effect.
By August 2020, There might be 150-160,000 American Covid19 deaths, but even this tragedy-from-farce is made worse by Trump’’s ongoing refusal to publicly wear a protective face mask,... even when members of his own family and staff are afflicted. (What a terrible, dysfunctional message to send out to his supporters who appear more and more to look like an anachronistic, throwback death-cult from Medieval plague times, near 700 years ago.)
But this digresses from the core rot of America’s unmet problems.
In addition to our current Pandemic, COVID-19 disease, the overall and continuing American theme for the past three years has been the barreling train wreck that is the Trump tenure as America’s somewhat farcical, but seriously globe-threatening, President.
As posted recently, America is currently experiencing not only a pandemic but a severe and unique economic calamity (40 million unemployed) and then on top of all this, America’s ever-present, but long ignored, racial issues have burst open like a ‘Buboe’ marker of another kind of illness - a social ‘dis-ease’ that has too hung around.even after the 1865 Civil War ‘ended’ with the emancipation of African-descended slaves.
And at the crossing point of these issues, at the nexus of America’s woes... stands Trump, negectful or ignorant of his responsibilities to his job, i.e., the notion of ‘service to the country’, that a president must take on as the starting point of his/her presidency. (But ‘our’ Trump appears to lack the intellect, situational awareness and thinking tools to do anything but focus on his own personal interests.)
Speaking further on America’s issue under the Trump tenure, it seems the fragility and impermanence of human society, and nations in particular, are constantly threatened by a leader’s hubris. Is this danger unavoidable? Answer, ‘sometimes’, but America has been blessed, it now appears, with a majority of principled Presidents whose internal checks have kept their integrity intact and provided them with credible vision. Donald Trump’s presidency has proved to be a gross outlier to that group,
Further to comment on America’s current state, reading recorded history of our human species, we can see that even for our ‘modern’ society, which has progressed from a belief in the
Ptolemaic earth-centered universe to walking on the moon (a technological miracle), humanity continues to fall short of managing our lives.
Despite our technological advances, the difficulty humanity has with self-management is an ever-present challenge facing us like some
Sisyphean burden. Is there a tragic flaw imbedded in our genes that keeps us in place no matter how hard we march and sweat?
The ancient Greeks, who passed to us the formula for our democracy, had two terms they invented from their own experiences with several hundred years of democracy -
kakistocracy and
idiocracy.
These terms describe a confused and disorganized government firstly led by those who are completely unqualified, the ‘
kakistocrats’; and then, perhaps most importantly to nurture social stability, led by those who also lack a sense of what might be important beyond their own selfishness - the ‘
idiots’. The ‘
idiot’ might be very intelligent by measure of standardized scales, e.g., SATs, but nevertheless lacking the ability to see the ‘Common Good’, a pillar principle supporting democracy and a major philosophical theme framing the American Constitution.
(Trump appears amply‘gifted’ with both ‘non-qualities’, ‘idiocy’ and ‘kakistocracy’.... in one package.)
America’s problems aren’t hard to sort. They reduce to principally three issues.
First, there is America’s
still very much alive Civil War Of 1861-65. The losing side, the former ten Confederate states, have until very recently in 2020 (owing to the public outrage over the police killings of Afro-Americans
George Floyd et al) continued for a century and a half, 155 years, to fly the confederate flags in equal status with the conqueror’s flag, that of the American Union.
Is this a lost war to the Confederacy view? Not at all because the War’s continuance was acknowledged, accepted and then effectively ‘won’ by the Southern Confederacy through legally enforced ‘Jim Crow’ laws which returned former slaves from Constitutionally freed status to de facto, second-class chattel status separated in contact from mainstream (White) America.
The lingering a legacy of de-facto slavery continually erupts like a dormant volcano, yet America’s partisan political terrain prevents a coherent effort to even discuss this subject.
Second, there is America’s loss of commitment to the
Common Good - principally exampled by our failure to have a true, inexpensive, national healthcare-for-all program (also free of Trumpist financial tricks, e.g., ‘find the pea-in-the-pod’ games that just dig deeper financial holes for the poor and middle class), and our failure to have a free, or almost completely subsidized national higher education program that will allow America’s youth to develop on par with other technologically advanced nations who invest heavily in educating their youth, and educate and train our labor force to make America and its people competitive in an advanced global technology market.
Third, America appears in dire need of principled, focused leadership ...which Donald Trump is not providing.
Again:
Wikipedia: “ship of fools is an allegory about a ship with a dysfunctional crew. The allegory is intended to represent the problems of governance prevailing in a political system not based on expert knowledge, such as democracies!
From the first week of Trump in the White House, we’ve watched America being dismantled ...by Trump himself or by the hands of his groveling henchmen, Attorney General William Barr, is the latest Frog-marched puppet.
At first, we thought, ‘Trump will calm down as soon as the weighty ‘Responsibilities-of-Office’ hit him.
Then it became, ‘Just a bit longer’, and ‘He’ll ‘grow’ into the office‘. But that didn’t happen, either.
And now after near 4 years, we know, or should sense at least, that Trump is not the Presidential type.
Trump does have skills... but not the kind that should occupy the OVAL OFFICE.It seems his chief skill is the ‘business bluff’ and ‘heavy-lean’, i.e.,
gangsterism and grift.
An example of this was the ‘
The Ukraine Affair‘, Trump’s attempted, under-the-table, back room, quid-pro-quo deal to block and trade already House-approved American aide for a promise from Ukraine’s president to state the falsity that Ukraine was investigating the Joe Biden family. (Note the grifter’s subtlety, simply the claim of investigation not a statement of a crime committed!). The House didn’t fall for it and Trump got himself impeached for that!
Grift is Trump’s signature move; not strategy or finesse...although one suspects William Barr was brought on as Trump’s personal Attorney General ‘table pet’ to fill that gap but even the slick steer Barr seems to follow right along in Trump’s footsteps...with inevitable, embarrassing pratfalls.
Perhaps America is fortunate that Trump and company are not perfect, there are so many clowns faces in that circus ring that their plots and schemes fall apart as much from their own faults as from public oversight.
The American disintegration under Trump has proceeded like a tantrum thrown by a temperamental child - fragile things like treaties and alliances have been broken, and so quickly! And now America is almost down to ashes.
And that is another lesson we’ve been forced to confront: the American constitution really is a framework whose implementation relies on there being a core set of principles within the nature of a president that, despite political party ties, provides ‘constancy‘ and, perhaps above all, explanations for executive actions.
This feature of our Constitution - a framework construction that is broad yet reliant on law and on principled execution - has given America stability combined with robustness, ie., adaptability to history and societal evolution and maturity. Trump seems not able to grasp the wheel of this ship.
It appears that Trump neither meets the qualifications needed for the chief executive nor comprehends the guidelines for performing the job of the American President.
America is now a ‘ship of fools’ captained by the greatest fool of us all, D Trump, the epitome of a kakis-tropic fool.
Again, from Plato’s ’The Republic‘:
“There’s the shipowner, larger and stronger than everyone in the ship, but somewhat deaf and rather short-sighted, with a knowledge of sailing to match his eyesight.“
(Post script: it’s not that Trump has no competence, it’s that his abilities don’t match up with (‘Fit’) requirements for the President of the United States, i.e., he s unfit.)
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