What Effect Will President Trump Have on Philosophy?

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
1

I’m talking real philosophy. We already know stupid face Memes will continue on unabated by the zombie left.

Every President inspires a political discourse. Under Obama, it was the return of examining the constitutionality of presidential actions, his whole term was defined by scandels, everyone the world around learned about countless clauses of the US Constitution and our approach to law (mostly by negative example).

Under Bush, everything was Synergy, a repetition of classically American formulas for governance, while his administration was for the most part saddled with war on two fronts. It was a real test, would be for any president, his emphasis on secrets and personal loyalty was mocked a lot, but makes a lot of sense looking back with the spy scandles since Obama dropped the emphasis. Both presidents were hated, operated under divided government. Both suffered catastrophe. Under Obama, for no apparent reason, the country plunged into a pointless race war.pointless
I am not too fond looking back at either presidential administration. A bad situation started under Bush, and became really bad under Obama… in a sense, it was as if the same man was in office for 16 years, just shifted to a counter ego… same war, just done worst the second time around, same carelessness with money, just multiplied by 10 the second time around, same ignorance and arrogance, and self assurity, just multiplied again… by ten.

I can’t really point to a defining philosophy of this era… philosophers took better note that military operations didn’t compute in advance humanitarian fallout… this focus did indeed exist prior, but it didn’t exist in any war calculus I’ve seen in modern times. Our concepts of economics more or less retarded… we still hold to the Marxist, Austrian, and Kenysian School of Economics, but each position seems less understood each passing year, and more fanatacized. We had some third party movements develop, but they were largely products of media wings and corporate interests. The Tea Party birthed from Fox News, Occupy Wall street a corporate puppet of the Democratic left… was a shameful joke, both movements in the end. It does suggest manufactured, synthetic movements that spontaneously arise, make no real sense when closely analyzed (there is no 1% controlling everything, just like there is no Illuminati, just a Ignoranti of potheads insisting there is).

We saw French Philosophy fade away from the Anglosphere… when Bush first started, it was still really popular, but as time has gone by, it’s influence has increasingly dried up. French writers are rarely mentioned here… but back when Bush first started, everyone knew a lot about them, and the Marxist -Freudian Marxist tradition. Its still around in France of course, but is effectively dead now internationally. Did Bush or Obama cause this? Not intentional… just the 21st Century increasingly didn’t match the 20th… terrorism and jihad wasn’t quite the same as Mutually Assured Destruction and Communist Insurgency, and the lifestyle of desert bumpkins denouncing the west, declaring holywars was just… even less appetizing the old USSR or China under Mao.

We had a era of endless hypocrizing and self hipocrisy. Philosophy made some movements fireward, but nothing impressive. We’ve seen a great dying off of old systems. The certainty of the European Left is crumbling under the onslaught of out of control environmentalism stealing the stage for defence… as a result, Europe is refortifying it’s frontiers and seriously questioning it’s economic strategy. Norway and Finland entered into long term economic depressions, once beacons for runaway socialism. Hate crimes are spreading across Europe… America is watching it’s Eastern Partner in Western Civilization self destruct. EU destroyed Greece with it’s Debt and now Migrants. A lot of doubt and cynicism is rising, we see the slow implosion the EU is in could happen here if the course remains as it is.

Trump offers something else. What? I don’t know… a wild card. Wont resemble either Bush or Obama. He certainly won’t play by European Rules, which at this point can’t be a bad thing, Europe is failing. He won’t have government as badly divided, at least in his first term… he can play both sides of the isle, while being superficially a Republican… but at this point, what does Republican even mean?

US doesn’t really have a foreign philosophical tradition to look to. Continental Philosophy is effectively dead. Its of no real influence anymore. There is no country the left or right can point to as a role model. No good -ism to latch onto, other than don’t repeat Obama’s many, many horrifying blunders, or go in full blown into a war without considering the long term political frictions and mayhem opposition parties in your own country and allied states can produce… a lot of the problems today is directly traceable back to that era, by these actors. The pains of this era is from the chickens coming home to roost, a karma of sorts.

What can we expect from philosophers under Trump? I’m rating him close to Teddy Roosevelt and Jackson in terms of showmanship and unorthodox behavior… of course elitists on the left will abhor them, but the world abhors them as a group at this point. I don’t think the bulk of philosophy is going to be as beholden to their inane mayhem as it was under bush… we experienced that, all it got us was someone even worst, Obama. I don’t think we are going to make that mistake this time around, but also doubt if this will lead to a new era of critical thinking, or political realism.

I don’t quite know where we will be heading, but doubt it will be a 5th term for Bush… I think Trump will decisively break with the Bush-Obama downhill trajectory and do his own thing. What does this mean for us, as thinkers?

2

That if you’re a bankrupt billionaire and failed ex television celebrity you also have the opportunity of becoming the sole leader over an equally bankrupt nation. The things that dreams are made of. American Dream 2.0

3

Political Correctness and Common Sense will be the watchwords if there’s a Trump presidency. People are going to examine and re-examine the reasons for his success, and eventually they’ll realize that it happened because the intersection of media and politics created an anti-intellectual bubble that he burst.

Every adult human being knows that if David Duke endorses you, it doesn’t make you a KKK member or evil or anything of the kind. It’s a complete non issue, and every adult, like Trump or hate Trump, knows that this is true deep down. However, we’ve been asked to accept this sort of pagentry for decades- the idea of the ‘gaff’- the thing you say that if willfully misinterpreted by people who hate your guts, could make you look terrible or stupid. We accept this because at least some of the time we benefit from it- sooner or later some candidate we hate will use the phrase ‘you people’ or be caught saying ‘fuck’ into a mic he thought was shut off, and we’ll get to have our turn pretending to be outraged and calling for their head. We’ve been doing it so long that I think a lot of people only barely realize how fake they’re being.

So along comes Trump, and he gives zero shits. When Univision accusses him of a gaff, he doesn’t fall all over himself apologizing and thus justifying the pageant, he simply says “Fuck Univision, they’ve always had it out for me.” SIding with Trump in incidents like that makes people feel smart, because for so long they’ve felt a little bit stupid for going along with ideas like ‘of course if you use the phrase ‘binders full of women’, you are ineligable to be POTUS.’ They went along with it because that’s simply what politics was. You either pretended to be outraged when your character in the pageant was called upon to be outraged, or you were on the sidelines, being that person who ‘didn’t really care about politics’.

4

Uccisore, calm down friend, your hard on for Trump is showing. It’s the toupe, isn’t it?

5

I have an fun intellectual exercise for you. Give me a reason I should let you post on my sections of the forums.

6

That’s the spirit imperator. Show everybody here that inner fascist nature of yours because you can’t take a joke.

I’m going to take a wild guess here and say that you don’t have a sense of humor. You’re a serious guy, aren’t you? :laughing:

Touchy, touchy…

7

So you don’t have one then? That’s all I needed to hear.

8

You go ahead and do that where we can then ask Carleas along with the rest of the board here what they think about your actions.

9

Yeah… I threw political correctness out the window a while ago… he seems more or less to use some of the same formulas in this regard, he doesn’t use humor that much though.

I agree the era of outrage at words and codewords is more or less dead, we had this debate here already, it’s gonna become national soon. It just… when you have that style, comedy really works. It didn’t work as much for Senator Black, a former comedian, but he wasn’t in a revolutionary Congress then, and wasn’t taken seriously to begin with. Trump has that temper, and sense of authority. A few lampoons could be devastating on a philosophical scale coming from him.

But these techniques doesn’t build a philosophical position per say… I could take up Kropotkins position philosophically, and still use the same rhetorical approach. There is a high gap between philosophical positions and how you deal with question and responses, how you project your ideas. Had Jesus lack charisma, his ideas never would of attracted attention. If Hawkings wasn’t in a wheelchair with a robot voice, people wouldn’t pay attention to him… all three could exchange and teach/preach each others message, using their own methods… Trump could run around bombastic preaching about black holes and time’s arrow, wouldn’t change the information itself, but the reception.

I think there will not only be a collapse of smug political correctness (will still exist in a modified form) but a return to studying rhetoric. A lot of philosophers will have to go back into the history of debate and reexamine the craft… it was always part and parcel to philosophy, and then mummified. Only the revolutionary left was allowed to get emotional, and even there, the forms of expression solidified into mere play acting. This is the first time we’ve seen someone not play to a script, but I know from experience, it is still very much a methodological script. It can be turned on and off tactically.

10

I dunno that many pot heads that get in to the conspiracy stuff. Most of the people like that who I’ve met were on some kind of crazy meds for one mental thing or another. It’s the pill people who get stuck in that conspiracy loop.

11

Oh, that’s right, in all the history of civilization there has never been a single conspiracy ever. Oh, right… :sunglasses:

12

Uh… I worked security at a music amphitheater one year, it tended to be the potheads that were the most paranoid… I walk by, smell it, duck my head in, do my Super Trooper Stare, and one chick (usually the women) would be looking with their face straight on, eyes staring at be from the side, lips pressed together hard making a funny face as their feet stomp out the stuff.

Sometimes I would pop up a few rows in front of them later on, just stair and make eye contact, move on… your being watched bitch. Rest of the night, you know they are paranoid as fuck looking for you. You can’t do this with a cigarette smoker, they don’t fall for it.

13

You’re sick man. Didn’t occur to you that maybe your behavior is what made them paranoid?